In my recent post about government’s manifest failure in the face of climate change, GerrardOfTitanServer naturally cropped up and started banging the “Nuclear is our only option” drum. I got so annoyed – he has pulled several comment threads into the weeds in the past – with him that I implied that maybe he could fuck off a little bit.
I regret that. The philosophical ideal would be to not be King Thag of This Blog, and fall back on my authority – which is real as far as bits in this corner of the internet go – I should have had the patience to engage, instead. So, I thought about GerrardOfTitanServer’s arguments for, oh, 5 minutes, and noticed a few gigantic, glaring holes in them. This posting is about that, and I welcome and invite anyone who wants to argue with GerrardOfTitanServer to go ahead.
This can be the GerrardOfTitanServer thread and, note to GerrardOfTitanServer: do not continue to drag other comment threads into endless text-walls of argumentation or I’ll shut you down. You’ve got your thread, now, here you go, this is it.
First off, some ground-work: Gerrardian has said things to the effect that “greens” are a threat to civilization and ought to be suppressed or silenced or dropped into the ocean (where they would release carbon) or something like that. The problem there is that we aren’t necessarily “greens” here. GerrardOfTitanServer is arguing with a stereotype that they’ve created in their mind, and that’s bad strategy, which says something for their overall strategic judgement. It’s easy to take a rhetorical side-step and ignore everything they’re saying by asserting “I’m not one of your ‘Greens'” and dragging them into a quagmire of detailed beliefs. [stderr – my earlier Argument Clinic post on labels] But I’m not interested in taking a rhetorical dodge pro forma – it’s more a case that GerrardOfTitanServer is flat out wrong about important things. And GerrardOfTitanServer is really right about a lot of important things; what they don’t seem to understand is that being really right about one point doesn’t mean you’re right about everything else.
In the past, I’ve commented regarding the climate crisis, as follows:
- We need to throw everything we’ve got at the problem including nuclear power.
- Cutting back dramatically on CO2 emissions is an obvious response, it’s the details that are ugly.
- Governments and their masters are a significant part of the problem and, since governments have regulatory control over humanity’s response to the climate crisis, we cannot simply ignore them.
“general purpose heat source” LOL
I have also commented regarding nuclear power, in general:
- I’ve been to Chernobyl and now that miles of topsoil have been scraped away and buried, it’s a nice place. I extend my awed personal thanks to the hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukranian miners who followed orders and went to clean up that beast.
- I understand that the death-rate of accidents like Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Windscale [wik] and Fukushima is very low.
- I don’t think that nuclear accidents or spent fuel are, in and of themselves, reasons to avoid nuclear power. What they are is reasons to be careful about spent fuel and nuclear accidents. Fossil fuels aren’t great, either – I live 12 miles from the coal-fired power plant at Shawville, PA, and I’ve seen the coal ash mountain that it produces – that is nasty stuff and I don’t want it seeping into my ground-water any more than I want radiation seeping into my ground-water.
- Fusion remains 30 years in the future, and I believe that the US government should be spending “department of defense-style” money researching it, instead of, uh, department of defense-ing. The intellectual byproducts of the Manhattan Project were massive and, if you consider it merely as a government-sponsored high tech research project, it was massively successful. [I count the “moon race” in with the US’ nuclear war preparations, fwiw.] If humanity, collectively, were sensible, we’d have been spending like drunken sailors on researching fusion power, 30 years ago. But, see my point on “governments” above; the government has been able to regulate for fossil fuel subsidies instead of researching nuclear fission and fusion power, and we will all regret that Real Soon Now.
- Alternative fission power appears to be on the same time-ramp as fusion, and I am not sure why. I first heard about “pebble bed” reactors in the 1980s and they were going to be everywhere in 20 years, or something like that. I was a kid in the 80s, so I believed when “they” said that. What happened? I don’t know. But there is a point to be made here: if the CIA can haul plutonium-powered electronics up into the Himalayas, and lose them then what has happened that there are not safe and effective small-scale powerplants? [wired] I’m not saying that every smallish town should have a SNAP (Radioisotope thermo-electric generator) [wik] but there are governments in the world that have experience building such things, and coincidentally have lots of plutonium that they keep pointing at each other’s citizens, threatening global destruction. Maybe those swords could be beaten into plowshares, or something, huh? The Cassini probe was powered with one. There ought to be massive investment and effort on developing a full panoply of nuclear-powered (fusion/fission/radioisotope decay) power and it should be 20 years ago.
I am endlessly frustrated by people who say “nuclear power is dangerous” without specifying what kind of nuclear power and what kind of dangers. Stacking some nuclear power options, or even solar panel manufacture, up against fossil fuels, and it seems to me that we’re in a maze of twisty risk-management decisions not all of which are good by any measure. Further, I think that the opinion I just stated disqualifies me thoroughly as one of GerrardOfTitanServer’s “Greens” – I’m “green” only to the extent that I want humanity’s power systems to not fuck us up long-term the way fossil fuels have, and the way the landscape around Chernobyl is fucked up.
But let me come at this from another angle, to explain why GerrardOfTitanServer’s ideological purity of nuclear-ness doesn’t work:
Many people suffered following power cuts in the aftermath of two hurricanes, but advocates say solar power will withstand future disasters
Rosalina Marrero spends the best part of each day ironing and watching telenovelas at her modest bungalow in Puerto Rico’s coastal Guayama province. When it gets too hot or her asthma plays up due to the toxic coal ash from the nearby power plant, the 78-year-old widow rests on an adjustable hospital bed, clicks on the fan and thanks God for the solar panels on her roof.
Earlier this year, Marrero was among two dozen residents in a low-income, predominantly Black neighbourhood blighted by coal pollution, fitted with a rooftop solar and storage system. Campaigners say systems like hers should be rolled out more widely to tackle the island’s energy crisis and the global climate emergency – both of which are exacerbating racialized health inequalities.
At this point, I feel that I can “mic drop” on GerrardOfTitanServer and walk away, but I’m not going to play for drama. This is serious business.
Unfortunately, you’d have to be one of the biggest idiots in the world to want to build a conventional nuclear reactor on Puerto Rico, although the massive spike it would cause in the local construction economy would definitely be welcome. And in a decade, or so, they’d have lots of nuclear power. It makes as much sense as telling them “wait for fusion power, it’s coming in only 30 years!” would. Except that nobody, ever, especially not the US, would give Puerto Rico nuclear power. Unfortunately, the governments of the world have come to realize that when Canadians teach India how the nuclear processing cycle works, and builds them a breeder reactor, you get nuclear weapons not clean energy. When you have Israeli scientists studying in Chicago under Enrico Fermi, and A Q Khan learning how to enrich plutonium at Siemens AG in Germany, you get nuclear weapons not clean energy. The US keeps Puerto Rico so poor and supine that they probably would never dream of nuclear weapons, but the US has, unfortunately, burned its fingers on proliferating nuclear technology – somewhere in the 80s we switched to proliferating by staging US-made H-bombs all around the world, instead of teaching people nuclear technology.
That’s an important point because, unfortunately, non-proliferation efforts would make it harder for people to just go buy their own radioisotope thermoelectric generators at WAL-MART. “Hey, can you top up my plutonium? I’ve been mining bitcoin, lately…” Yes, if we could go back in time 30 years and change the direction of the future, maybe there would be regional pebble-bed reactors everywhere. I’d prefer that to a coal-fired power plant in Shawville, assuming that the plutonium didn’t wind up scattered around the neighborhood, like the CIA’s SNAP that they lost in the headwaters of the Ganges River.
My point in all of this is that GerrardOfTitanServer is not just wrong, but is stupidly wrong when they say that humankind should not be wasting their time on solar, wind, and other stuff that demonstrably works. I understand that nuclear powerplants also demonstrably work – I spent most of my summers in France, which has a really nice power-grid that rests on a platform of nuclear powerplants that have been quietly, unobtrusively functional. It can be done. It should have been done. But since it takes a decade or two to build a power grid like that, and it’s not an option for places subject to flooding, political unrest, or poverty maybe GerrardOfTitanServer can re-think their position, which amounts to: “the rich people of the world should tell all the poor people of the world to just get by without electricity” because, when they say that solar, wind, and hydro are a bad idea, that is what they are saying.
[mjr, 2008, near Balestrand, Norway]
GerrardOfTitanServer is saying, bless their heart, that building such systems is an unnecessary distraction from building the nuclear power plants that are going to be too late to save the world. And by “bless your heart” I mean that in the passive-aggressive sense.
Actually, I want to hammer on that point, a bit. Here’s a view across the same fjord, from standing on the “dam” at the hydro plant:
You see that lovely waterfall on the opposite side? Yeah, that’s another hydro plant. There’s so much water flow that there wasn’t a need to stop the waterfall; the plant is powered by the excess and (the Norwegian plant engineer said) it actually helps control erosion, which is a big deal if you don’t enjoy having the side of your fjord collapse into the fjord and create a mega-tsunami. Norwegian humor is bone dry, reminiscent of the Finns, so maybe he was kidding me about the mega-tsunamis.
Or, maybe not.
That sort of power would be completely the wrong thing for Puerto Rico, but if the US government weren’t a bunch of horrible, racist assholes, they could be building wave and wind power down there. The deployment time for such systems is large, to be sure (it may already be too late) but Puerto Rico is a perfect example of what I mean when I say “the best approach is to throw everything we have at the problem”, which is very different from GerrardOfTitanServer’s approach, namely to accuse anyone who advocates for a thoughtful approach to local power needs of being a “green” and being part of the problem.
It is a social justice issue. Because of the expense and fissionable materials control problems in a nuclear reactor, nuclear power for Puerto Rico (or for the American South, such as Florida and Texas) is a bad option. I’m not saying that because I’m a “green” I’m saying that because I saw what happened at Fukushima as a massive engineering failure. And, with regard to Texas: those assholes already have too much of the US nuclear arsenal under their control and we ought to be subtly clawing back those deployments and turning Texas into an economic backwater to match its political backwater status. (and by “backwater” I mean “septic tank”)
Let me wrap this up here, with some predictions. Usually, when challenged, Gerrardian likes to avoid grappling with the political and technical reality of energy systems. It’s childishly easy to say “don’t waste your time on hydro” but its equally easy to dismiss it by replying “go talk to the Norwegians.” Or “hey why don’t you just stay poor without electricity” to basically, Africa. Not just Puerto Rico. Hidden behind the “nuclear power everywhere” idea is a whole lot of political complexity that is being swept under the carpet – and that is exactly the political complexity that got us to where we are, right now. Put another way: Joe Manchin should have been bought off with the promise of another yacht for himself and a few more millions for his family, in return for building a windmill construction plant in his district in West Virginia. Instead, he’s going to try to kill a bunch of practical legislation in order to protect his (and, to be fair, his buddies’) fossil fuel interests. For GerrardOfTitanServer to continue to insist that nuclear is the only way forward displays that they don’t even understand what “forward” means, in this day and context.
Puerto Rico: not having electricity is poverty. Of course they should put solar panels on their roof. Because waiting 20 years for nuclear power is a fool’s recommendation.
I don’t care about the dangers of nuclear power. There are some, but if you chalk “some people got irradiated at Chernobyl” up against “global warming from CO2 emissions” it’s clear to me that the only way nuclear anything is going to produce an extinction event for humanity is if the assholes in power start a full-up nuclear war (which they have always wanted to do). The time to have argued about safety was 30-50 years ago, when scientists who worked for oil companies started writing papers about greenhouse gas. Oh, maybe the “green” in “greenhouse gas” is what confused GerrardOfTitanServer.
I’m not a “Green”, GerrardOfTitanServer, I’m a “Cynic.”
Advance warning: I probably will not track and respond to comments on this post if it turns into a massive pile of GerrardOfTitanServer text-walls.
Consider what happened at Chernobyl (and Fukushima) as social justice issues, rather than technical issues about the safety of nuclear power. Basically, the plants got built in disposable real estate, which was then disposed of (and the residents along with it) when normal engineering failures happened. GerrardOfTitanServer likes to talk about “how many people were killed or injured” but dodges around the absolute fact that there was gigantic economic consequences and those consequences fell entirely on the poor and less privileged. In their scenario of nuclear reactors going up, everywhere, what they’re really calling for is that poor folks will wind up living next to a reactor, which might someday fail and dispossess them even further. Based on that line of reasoning, I think someone ought to pass laws that if you have a residence that is valued at more than $1mn, it must have solar panels on the roof and if you own more than 10 acres of land, 10 acres has to be put into wind or solar power. And if you own more than 200 acres, you need to build a nuclear reactor and get your fissionable fuel from somewhere… How about that?
What is the point of mucking up his ‘nym?
Well said.
I, too, have noticed that Gerrardian can be single minded to the point of simplemindedness. The most famous case in point was in this thread.
In preparation for a live-streamed discussion in the tradition of the Bad Ad-Hoc Hypotheses conferences, I posted a talk abstract, purportedly by
Note: There is no such “Nanaimo Technical University” and “Darwinian-Dysonian Radioecology” is pseudoscientific bafflegab.
The point of the abstract was a plan to deposit nuclear waste around Pacific atolls, wait for Godzillas to develop, then capture them, chain them, and use their nuclear breath to power the grid with cheap, clean energy for all.
Gerrardian took me to task for exaggerating the dangers of nuclear waste. I wish I was kidding.
Like you I think that Gerrardian is right about some things. It is tragic that G can’t seem to think outside this box of his own making.
Oops. It’s still Gerrard of Titan Server, then? My bad. I thought this indicated that it had been changed by GoTS themself.
GoTS, I apologize for misnaming you. It was neither intentional nor malicious. I put a high priority on people being able to name themselves.
chigau@#1:
What is the point of mucking up his ‘nym?
Shortening it? I got tired of typing all that. Usually if I am replying to someone, I copy/paste their ‘nym but if it’s long I shorten it for aesthetics, e.g: Crip Dyke.
If they complain I’ll edit it in the OP.
Roy G. Biv Professor
Ah the famous rainbow chair!
:curtsey:
Over here in the desert southwest, where we seem to enjoy an abundance of uranium and thorium deposits but never enough water, I am sympathetic to the idea of huge, nuclear-powered desalination projects piping water over here from the coast.
In defiance of GOTS’s conspiracy, however, I’m one of those dastardly greens who voted for Jill Stein, twice. I’m willing to accept a strongly antiwar political movement even if it has anti-nuclear BS I disagree with, if only because I’m starting in a better place to convince them that nuclear power is worth doing.
Is anyone here actually a staunch anti-nuclear proponent? I’m sure as hell not.
I’m not asking people to raise their hands and be counted. But it seems to me that Gerrardian has a pretty badly-stuffed straw man he keeps beating at length.
Puerto Rico also has hydro (some of it built over a century ago), with potential to expand on that if the federal government doesn’t treat “lack of funds for maintenance” as a guiding principle in the future. (This page is pretty informative too.)
Conveniently, those same reservoirs are also useful for supplying fresh drinking and irrigation water, which of course is also a necessity. So there is a balance to be reached between that and power output (in combination with other sources like wind, solar, etc.), but there’s also no good reason not to get whatever you can out of them.
Before the island is bushed off as unimportant, since that is always what happens, I’ll note that 21 states (in addition to the other US territories and DC) all have smaller populations than PR.
Quote mining not intended:
What concerns me* is that Gerrard’s often arguing that we should make nuclear a more viable option by dispensing with some of the very same safety/oversight/planning measures that make it not-too-dangerous. Things just cycle back and forth between “nothing to worry about, just a bunch of baseless paranoia” and “let’s give everyone some shit to worry about.” Does it ever go anywhere productive? Of course not.
*On the other hand, it’s not like this is coming from the Department of Energy or the EPA or whatever … just some pretty inconsequential comments on blogs.
What a shame it would be if someone hijacked this thread for some other purpose.
File this under ‘what could possibly go wrong?’:
The Pentagon Aims to Predict Enemy’s Actions Through AI
Legend has it you have to say “Green Energy” three times infront of a mirror at midnight to summon him.
Oh yes. Look at what happened to the Texas power grid last winter, due to a dislike of oversight and regulation. Specifically, that multiple electricity generation plants failed due to lack of winterization. Nuclear power needs all the oversight and regulation it can get.
I am going to branch this in with another theme; I have seen you make the point that the U.S. military always prepares for the last war. Such it is in the field of nuclear power as well. Regulators look at what happened in previous incidents – Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and make recommendations to improve safety.
A specific example: Nuclear plants based on existing technology are in deep doodoo if their power goes out, because they have active safety systems. You can’t open that cooling valve to prevent meltdown if you don’t have power. After TMI, regulators introduced new rules that nuclear plants needed to have emergency generators for such occasions.
At Fukushima, they had an emergency diesel generator and fuel due to such regulations. They kept them in the basement, where they were flooded out by the tsunami. Oops.
So, what are my points? There are a few here.
1) No place – not Puerto Rico, not Texas – should have nuclear power unless then can handle the regulation and oversight that must accompany such facilities.
2) It would be great if a couple decades ago we had put out for research and funding of safer facilities – pebble bed, thorium, whatever. Facilities that are inherently safer due to passive shutdown measures, etc.
3) Even so, there may be problems resulting from these alternative designs, and we may not realize what they are until we experience them.
I think they should be spending DoD amounts of money, but not in typical DoD fashion. Nuclear fusion is a field that could benefit from smaller research programs that change the nature of the problem, whereas the DoD would be more likely to pick what they assume will be the winner and pump all of their money into that one project which would then experience decades of delays and cost overruns. Like say, a multi-trillion dollar laser ignition facility. Whereas if you fund 100 smaller ideas, maybe 50 of them fail, 49 don’t go anywhere, but one idea changes your outlook of what is possible.
Note to everyone: with respect, I have generally stopped commenting on this topic as – frankly speaking – the constant stress of reading the comments has exhausted me. I am replying to Marcus only (and probably only this once) in answer to his question. I’d genuinely appreciate it if everyone left me alone.
Marcus Ranum @ 8
I am pro-GHG reduction. I think (to the best of my understanding) it is quite likely this will involve nuclear power. I am, therefore, in my own estimation (if not that of others) pro-nuclear power. I have signed petitions, and lent my voice (professionally and personally) to supporting nuclear development (I would say I’ve had some moderate success with these discussions – though it is, admittedly, a lot easier in the circles I move within).
I don’t believe I have an unreasonable understanding of the risk of radiation (during my highly unremarkable academic career I spent some 5 years working at a synchrotron), and I am – personally speaking – rather fond of nuclear power as a solution in many respects. I am, as I’ve stated before, perfectly comfortable with the “weak” position of “let’s build lots of nuclear, where it makes sense” as that (to the best of my understanding) seems in line with current consensus.
I am sceptical about claims that nuclear power is the only solution as a) I don’t think we understand things or can predict future developments well enough to make that claim (I believe this is in line with the current scientific consensus), and b) I am sceptical that decarbonising through solely nuclear power is as easy as is made out (due to, for example, potential issues with lack of experienced developers, supply chains for construction and maintenance, political opposition, etc.). That doesn’t mean I don’t support nuclear development as a critical goal – I suspect it is going to be important that and even if (purely hypothetically) someone invents a “black box” generator tomorrow which renders the argument moot, I think the knowledge gained will be pretty useful anyway.
However, while I (as a non-expert) can stroke my chin about what the future holds, I defer to the experts on this. Given I regularly talk to people who work in that field at conferences (I am in storage, not generation, but there is some overlap), I think I have a reasonable grasp of the consensus when I say most experts would admit they don’t know what the optimal solutions are going to be (and that goes for pretty much every field: storage, generation, transportation, etc.). Most seem to be along the lines of Marcus’s “push everything now and lots of it” – nuclear, hydro, solar, wind, strap your family dog to a hamster wheel, for the love of FSM just do something! (note: this is a slight exaggeration for humorous purposes)
I could well be wrong, of course. Maybe it will turn out that every penny not spent on nuclear power was a penny wasted, maybe it will turn out that that one solar farm was the difference between life and death and if only it those resources had gone to nuclear power instead we would have been saved. It could be the case – but given that the amount of money spent on “useless crap” (such as ever larger death-penises..sorry, I meant “military hardware”), I think there are probably a few areas we can afford to cut before we have to start breaking people’s legs for having the temerity to put a solar panel on their roof. This is just an opinion, though.
I also think the political element is key too. It is easy to say “here’s what I would do if I had the power”, rather less so when you live in a world where a fair number of people would rather die than take a free, freely available medical treatment (for the sake of example). If New Zealand chose to go net zero with geothermal/hydro/a bit of wind, rather than “my personal exact preferences”, I’m not entirely convinced that it is going to be so much of a difference that it would be worth the time and effort to force nuclear power there instead. Again, maybe I’m wrong, but if I am I’d like it to be shown with an actual detailed evaluation than speculations from the internet.
For myself, I’ve pretty much given up commenting here (as GotS said “no great loss”). With respect, it is just a blog and I doubt many of us will influence stuff much. Frankly speaking, the benefits I get here (and, to be clear, there is some genuinely interesting and useful information) is usually outweighed by the emotional toll of having a > 50% chance I’m going to be called evil, stupid, incompetent, a propagandist, a troll, compared unfavourably to the Nazis, etc. etc. etc. Well, that’s the internet, I suppose – it is what it is.
I certainly (and completely sincerely) wish GotS well in their quest to convince people of the importance of nuclear power. It is an important point, and I agree one which is oft neglected (though I also think there is much more support for nuclear than they realise). I also wish anyone who is pushing for GHG reduction well too – I may think you are wrong about stuff (and you may think I’m wrong about stuff), but if you are pro-let’s-try-to-avoid-frying-to-death than we are pulling in similar directions (and the point where we won’t is probably a pretty long way off given the way things are going).
As for me, I’ll keep trying to push for rapid GHG reduction, and lending what time I have left to that endeavour. I suspect it will be futile – raging against the dying night – but I suppose it is my life to waste as I choose.
Un salud,
beholder @7,
Teensy problem there: nuclear plants (being thermal sources) need quite a bit of water for cooling purposes; the cooling efficiency is proportional to the temperature difference (so better in cooler climes).
To use one of Gerrard’s favourite sources:
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/cooling-power-plants.aspx
(Solar PV or wind turbines use zero water)
@John Morales:
That’s not a problem. That’s the point. They’re proposing “nuclear powered desalination projects”. Those plants wouldn’t be desalinating the 4 Corners region sandstone. They’d be located on the coast and desalinating seawater from the ocean which has, I’m told on good authority, at least 30% more water than needed to cool a gigawatt scale reactor.
The real downside is the hyper saline waste product, but that, it seems, can be further refined into sea salt + other dissolved solids. Once you remove the water and the NaCl, extracting other valuables like Lithium becomes commercially viable. With this “waste stream from desalination as input stream to other processes” it’s possible in theory to build Desal plants that would run at a loss but which are part of a cluster of plants that together operate at a profit. Or so I’m told. that research was speculative and out of the Gulf States. Not sure if the same economic assumptions would apply here.
Of course pumping fresh water from the edge of the Gulf of California to Phoenix is, I should say, a whole nother kettle of seafood.
Apologies to everyone, just a final PS
Marcus @ 8
Take this with salt, etc., but you might like this (just in case you haven’t seen before):
https://app.electricitymap.org/map
It isn’t complete, and there’s issues, etc., but you can see some of the energy flows and stuff in near real time. It looks like some power does go from Norway to the UK…
Suggestion: Place a reactor under the Capitol building. Then they’ll make damn sure it’s safe.
I’m not pretending there wouldn’t be significant problems to be overcome. Chief among them being 1.) The pipe would be a lot longer than the Gulf of California to Phoenix. It may go up into the Colorado Plateau and the Rocky Mountains. Factor in a power grid that keeps a series of water pumps going. 2.) We can’t mine radioactive ore using the same techniques we’ve done in the past — the Navajo Nation would have some choice words with us about that because they’ve lived with the health consequences. 3.) We’d be transporting a lot of radioactive material aboveground to the coast, and refining/consuming it in an earthquake-prone area. Let’s hope we’ve got all the nuclear fuel underground when the Big One hits.
It would be a megaproject worthy of 21st century technology and know-how. I think it could be done properly, but those problems would become huge liabilities if the people in charge of the budget decided to cut corners.
a single minded focus on nuclear power strikes me as a good way to dodge having to do anything personally. just send a boiler plate letter to various politicians once a year, and ignore it.
(IMO) dealing with climate change will require most people in rich nations to change how they live; less travel, less fancy houses, less consumption of stuff. a lot of people don’t want to fact that, this is something i see in my otherwise progressive friends. sure, these changes won’t be enough on their own, but (hopefully) it helps and it’s something that can be done while pushing for large scale renewables and nuclear.
@Beholder, 20
that strikes me as a brute force solution. that’s the thinking that has got us here, the focus needs to be on finding efficient ways to deal with the problem
consciousness razor@#9:
Puerto Rico also has hydro (some of it built over a century ago), with potential to expand on that if the federal government doesn’t treat “lack of funds for maintenance” as a guiding principle in the future
Yup.
It seems that the issues with clean energy come down to where the money gets spent. And Puerto Rico is hardly the best-kept American colony.
I don’t think any of this is a technical problem or even a complicated political one, once you move past the politics of “we want to spend money on F-35s that line our lobbyist buddy’s pockets and who cares about the little people?” The whole damn climate crisis is based on transferring wealth to a few very rich people, and the cooperative process in congress that makes sure that’s what happens.
I’ll note that 21 states (in addition to the other US territories and DC) all have smaller populations than PR.
Yeah, but which states are wealthier than Puerto Rico.
Puerto Rico’s a case study of how the US is going to deal with climate change for at-risk regions. Some jackass will come down for a photo-op throwing paper towels (I mean, seriously WTF?) and then it’s “into the memory hole; shut up you”
Reginald Selkirk@#12:
A specific example: Nuclear plants based on existing technology are in deep doodoo if their power goes out, because they have active safety systems. You can’t open that cooling valve to prevent meltdown if you don’t have power. After TMI, regulators introduced new rules that nuclear plants needed to have emergency generators for such occasions.
A profound point. Technologists also tend to focus on past failures; maybe not exactly because of the same myopia as the generals – failures aren’t an adaptive opponent (pace Murphy’s law) but new technologies bring new, unexpected, problems.
It underscores that if we had pebble bed reactors (whatever those are) we’d probably discover that there were flaws in the design, eventually. The Fukushima reactors had safety mechanisms that were better thought-out than TMI, if I understand correctly, but they had whole new kinds of problems. If I understand correctly, while the Fukushima reactors had core meltdowns, they didn’t have core excursions, or whatever you call it when the core melts and runs into the basement like at Chernobyl. [They jokingly offered to let me go down there and see the basement, but nobody meant it]
1) No place – not Puerto Rico, not Texas – should have nuclear power unless then can handle the regulation and oversight that must accompany such facilities.
I was being snarky about Texans’ endless yatter about secession, and here you are being serious. But also a good point. I’d add the phrase “long-term” in there somewhere. Regulation and oversight of nuclear reactors has to be someplace where fissionables won’t be diverted for reprocessing, and have to be safe from the kind of anti-science legislators that Texas has recently coughed up. Imagine operating a nuclear reactor under a political regime that things mask mandates in a pandemic are an appropriate political football. These are not serious people and they have no business managing complex technology, as we can see from their power grid.
It’s a problem. Back in the 80s when I read about “pebble bed reactors” which sounded a lot like a CIA SNAP there was discussion of them being semi-portable units that could be dropped into locations in the “third world” and swapped for maintenance. I think that was maybe someone daydreaming but the overall concept sounds about right and also deals, sort of, with the proliferation problem. A bit. I suspect the reality is that nuclear reactors are going to remain big, heavy things with huge amounts of plumbing and infrastructure – a lot of concrete for earthquakes and tsunamis and now floods.
And if that’s not bad enough, I really don’t like the physical footprint of a tokamak. Maybe 30 years after they work, fusion plants will get smaller, but it seems to me that the safety systems on nuclear systems tend to make them bigger and more complicated, no matter what. Having walked around in a Soviet nuclear reactor from the 60s/70s let me just opine that portable isn’t going to be an option. Ever.
2) It would be great if a couple decades ago we had put out for research and funding of safer facilities – pebble bed, thorium, whatever. Facilities that are inherently safer due to passive shutdown measures, etc.
If we had a time machine…
3) Even so, there may be problems resulting from these alternative designs, and we may not realize what they are until we experience them.
I’ve posted elsewhere here about Charles Perrow’s book Normal Accidents [wc] – his theory, which I will say is kind of hand-wavey, is that as complex interconnected systems go up, their failure modes become incomprehensible and therefore impossible to avoid. I think rigid compartmentalization of function with baseline parameters surrounding each function as part of its specification might work, but generally I agree with you – we’re going to find all kinds of new problems with fusion and alternate reactors if humanity ever gets off its tuchas and starts building them.
All of them, of course. It’s not good when looking at smaller scale communities either:
Or let’s only talk about “large cities”:
But wait a minute — that’s obviously not including San Juan with 41% in poverty. The second worst in the entire country, but it’s like it doesn’t even exist. Meanwhile, electricity costs there (from the EIA link in my earlier comment) are way above the national average. Neoliberalism is working like a dream.
well, this might get interesting, or just plain boring…
My main complaints with GoTS were that they weren’t arguing in good faith (held renewables to higher standards then nuclear, handwaved real problems with nuclear, and their main tactic for facing criticisms was to ignore them and hope the person gave up after combing through the 12th great wall of text for a response…); they were more interested in portraying “greenies” in a bad light, then, well, pretty much anything else; and those fucking great walls of text. I don’t even have enough free time in a day to read what they are capable of posting, let alone checking any of the sources, etc.
one of the few exchanges with GoTS I bothered to get into, I made several requests for them to provide a source for their claim (It was pre-covid, so I’m foggy on the details, and I’m too lazy to look it up now, so I likely have the details wrong. But, they made a bold claim that seemed unlikely, and after multiple (ignored) requests for a source/citation, finally relented and said they had none, and would not use that claim. They got quite mad when I later brought up the fact that they admitted to using a claim without sources, but I figure if they did it once, they likely did it more than once) Anyways, I just don’t have the time to read through those walls of text, especially with my current job.
As for nuclear, I’ll admit I’m a little biased. I grew up near TMI, and remember evacuating. I also remember people claiming that nuclear power would make electricity “free”… I really don’t think deregulation is a good idea there. And I also don’t think the infrastructure, energy, labor, and cost for mining the fuel, processing the fuel, transporting and storing the fuel, building the plant, building the storage sites, handling, transporting, potentially processing, and storing the waste is accounted for, let alone decommissioning all of the above. I’m not 100% anti-nuclear, but I’m far from convinced it’s the one true solution. And, I’m also not convinced it isn’t a non-renewable source. At best, right now, I’m more of the opinion it could be very useful in transition to a 100% renewable energy model, especially if we would have started ~30 years ago or so.
Anyways, all of that was pre-COVID. Seeing how we’ve responded to COVID so far, I’m convinced human civilization is doomed. I’m just glad I don’t have any kids. i’m just going to drink and watch humanity commit delayed suicide…
Crip Dyke @16: “It’s possible in theory to build Desal plants that would run at a loss but which are part of a cluster of plants that together operate at a profit. Or so I’m told.”
I’m 99% sure you are deliberately reminding us of the old joke about the retailer who sold products below cost, losing a little money on each sale. “We may lose money on each sale, but make up for it in volume.” Well played.
beholder @20: “We can’t mine radioactive ore using the same techniques we’ve done in the past — the Navajo Nation would have some choice words with us .”
I know we’re talking nuclear here, but battery technology has its own problems. The Paiute (and other Tribes) are not happy at all about lithium miners wanting to tear up (as in “destroy”) their sacred sites. https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/native-americans-lose-bid-halt-digging-nevada-lithium-mine-site-2021-09-03/
No. I do not mean shortening it.
compare
GerrardOfTitanServer
GerrardianOfTitanServer
chigau@#27:
compare
GerrardOfTitanServer
GerrardianOfTitanServer
Oh, that was a mistake. I’ll fix it.
I think that this person has used several nyms because of being banned here and there for trollishness, so I don’t put a lot of effort into remembering exactly how to spell nyms that are probably temporary anyhow.
[Marcus, no, just the one ‘nym change, and not because of being banned.
He advertised the change at the time and explained why he made it]
John Morales@#29:
There are two people who post on this blog whose comments I frequently don’t bother to read. GerrardOfTitanServer is one, you are the other one.
I know they used to post under another ‘nym, but for the life of me, couldn’t remember it until Crip Dyke posted a link to an exchange on her blog, back when they used to be “enlightenment liberal”, although they had the same avatar icon, which kinda gives it away, if the nuclear spam/”green” hate doesn’t….
I can never get over the irony of the fact that the most efficient way that has been engineered to use nuclear fission is to BOIL WATER, just like you would do with a wood fire 250 years ago.
Marcus:
What the fuck Marcus? You post a giant wall of text filled with nonsense? How the hell am I supposed to respond to that without a greater size wall of arguments backed by citations? You should know that someone replying to a Gish Gallop frequently requires more time to respond compared to the initial Gish Gallop. If that’s the rules for engagement, why the hell should I even bother?
PS:
Fucking lies. I changed my name once because I wanted to avoid the negative connotations of “EnlightmentLiberal”, and I was very open about it, posting both names for an extnded period of time on all of my posts, and I used the same account to do it. I’ve never been banned from anywhere on FreeThoughtBlogs (to my surprise as well some days).
Jesus Fuck. You want me to engage with you after you treat me like this? Da fuck. I think I’ll pass.
PPS: Thanks John.
Too mad. I made a post anywhere. I tried to make it short. I failed.
I agree that it’s a social justice issue. That’s why I’m fighting against people like you who spread gross misinformation on this topic, such as you.
Most climate scientists agree with me that nuclear must be a significant part of the answer, and some, like Dr. Kerry Emanuel, have gone further and explicitly said that we should stop wasting money on solar and wind.
https://youtu.be/KnN328eD-sA?t=1956Also, some make another strong point; Dr James Hansen and Dr Kerry Emanuel say that Greens are more to blame for climate change compared to climate change deniers because Greens are blocking nuclear power which is required for a solution.http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110729_BabyLauren.pdfhttps://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/10/29/top-climate-scientists-warn-governments-of-blatant-anti-nuclear-bias-in-latest-ipcc-climate-report/I never said that hydro is a waste of time. I said that solar and wind are wastes of time. You seem unable to tell the difference. I can. Note: I’m generally in favor of hydro. Also note: depending on circumstances, some hydro dams emit the greenhouse gas equivalent of a coal power plant. No really. It’s true. And you thought hydro was always low-greenhouse gas. Thankfully, it appears that most don’t.
https://blogs.edf.org/energyexchange/2019/11/15/long-considered-a-clean-energy-source-hydropower-can-actually-be-bad-for-climate/You argued for the feasibility of solar, wind, and wave power by citing the success of hydro power. That’s a non-sequitur. It’s an obviously fallacious argument. Again, it seems like you can’t tell the difference between the different technologies.
Your cited an example of rooftop solar and battery packs. I am unfamiliar with that exact case offhand. However, I can make the following observations. To the extent that that the rooftop solar + batteries work, a nuclear + grid solution would be much at least 10x cheaper and produce less harmful toxic materials. The solar + batteries home system probably doesn’t supply anything close to 24-7 power, and if it does, it would be extremely expensive. There’s not enough feasibly mineable lithium in the world for the whole world to follow this plan. Ditto for nickel and lead.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/08/nation-sized-battery/There’s not enough free land for hydro storage.https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/Some random factoids: Note that solar cells are probably so cheap today because half of them, approx, are probably made with Uighur slave labor in China.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57124636There’s aalso no robust plan for disposal of solar cells which are often considered hazardous waste. Similarly, wind turbines generate a lot of toxic waste in their supply waste. Wind turbines are so cheap in part because rare earths are so cheap because 95% of the supply comes from China because China allows their mining and refining without proper environmental protections.https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-on-earthThe biggest renewables tech by far is hydro. Worldwide, it’s about 500 GW (real production, not nameplate). Global energy demand is around 20 TW today, and will reach around 30 TW by 2030, and much higher by the end of the century. Because of the lack of suitable topology, it’s unlikely that hydro capacity could double worldwide, meaning that hydro, while good and useful, is a rounding error in terms of the total energy production that we need. And all of the other renewables are even worse for their own, unique reasons. The plausible amount of harnessable tidal power is 400 GW.
https://www.britannica.com/science/tidal-powerWave power is similarly limited.https://www.kslaw.com/blog-posts/the-potential-of-wave-powerConventional biofuels compete with land for growing food, and there’s not that much farmable land, and so conventional biofuels are also similarly limited. Geothermal is good in a few isolated areas AFAIK, but that success does not extrapolate to most areas. When you add up all of the renewables, the only ones with remotely enough potential to address the scale of 20 T0, 30 TW, etc., is solar and wind – everything else is a rounding error – and solar and wind can’t work because of their intermittency and common mode failures, and because of the lack of economically feasible scalable storage, plus a whole raft of other issues including grid inertia (which could be solved by expensive synchronous condensers) and blackstart capability (which could also be solved by lots of expensive backup equipment). (Breaking down solar and wind requires extended arguments and more than one citation. Maybe another post if permitted.)Re proliferation. I agree that this is a big concern. However, there are reasons to believe that you’re exaggerating the risks here. There are many countries with civilian nuclear power plants without nuclear weapons, and there are some countries (e.g. North Korea) without nuclear power plants that do have nuclear weapons. It appears to me that the best way to reduce the spread of nuclear weapons is to give nuclear power to those who want it under conditions of an inspections regime under the IAEA, and that’s more likely to happen if the West gets involved because otherwise someone from Pakistan, China, Russia, etc., will be happy to provide nuclear power without such constraints. Still, there is an inextricable link between nuclear power tech and nuclear weapons tech, and again I agree that this is the biggest downside of nuclear power by far. I just think that there is no option except to try to deal with it because the alternative is runaway climate change.
You don’t know what you’re talking about when it comes to radiation safety. You might not be a Green, but you’re repeating the same lies from the Green anti-nuclear hysteria textbook. In particular, the topsoil removal program at Fukushima was not medically indicated. I don’t know about Chernobyl, but I bet the same was true that. Ditto for almost all of the evacuations too. The evacuations killed more people at Fukushima than the worst case of radiation induced deaths had they simply stayed in place.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/03/11/it-sounds-crazy-but-fukushima-chernobyl-and-three-mile-island-show-why-nuclear-is-inherently-safe/https://www.heritage.org/nuclear-energy/commentary/nuclear-could-be-the-clean-energy-source-the-world-needsTODO I could use better sources.You mentioned the dangers of radiation leaking into the groundwater. This is largely another Green inspired myth that you’re repeating here. From the natural nuclear reactor in Oklo, Gabon, we know how far nuclear waste travels over millions and billions of years. We’ve done the experiment. It’s not a problem.
http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/cnf_sectionE.htm#v2Let me make a seemingly outrageous claim to drive this point home – you could drink nothing but the highest contaminated tritium water being held in tanks at Fukushima for years, drinking it straight from the tank, and you would probably be fine, actually be fine. The estimated dose rate that you would get is less than dose rates which have been shown to be completely harmless in certain mice.https://news.mit.edu/2012/prolonged-radiation-exposure-0515(I’m unaware of any website that does shows the calculation and sources, but I can reproduce that calculation here plus sources if desired.) Given that it’s probably safe to drink the contaminated water directly from the storage tanks, why would you ever be worried about a leak? Here’s another seemingly outrageous claim – the most severely irradiated cohort of liquidators at Chernobyl are predicted to have a smaller risk of premature death from radiation according to LNT compared to the risk of premature death from mundane air pollution in most major cities.https://www.theguardian.com/science/2007/apr/03/uknews.pollutionIf the risk is that small for being among the most heavily irradiated cohort of cleanup workers at Chernobyl, then the risk from nuclear waste leakage must be truly minuscule. The problem is that your understanding of the dangers of radiation are seemingly exaggerated a thousand-fold compared to what’s actually dangerous. Air pollution actually kills people. It’s one of the leading causes of death worldwide. 1 out of every 8 deaths worldwide is attributable to preventable air pollution.https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollutionBy contrast, nuclear power accidents and nuclear waste have likely killed at most a few hundred people (I’m ignoring estimates based on LNT), and excluding Chernobyl, the answer is approximately zero. Comparing coal ash and nuclear waste as somehow equivalent or similar in danger to humanity and nature – it’s unmitigated nonsense. It’s nonsense because we can safely dispose of the nuclear waste because there’s so little of it, but we cannot safely dispose of the coal ash because there’s so much of it.@ ^ GerrardOfTitanServer : you get your own dedicated thread to put your case for teh one topic you most love to discuss and you’ll pass on it? Okay..
@ 8. Marcus Ranum : “Is anyone here actually a staunch anti-nuclear proponent?”
What sort of nuclear?
Solar power from our daytime star’s core hydrogen fusion – great, I’m all in favour. Got PV panels on my roof and all.
Thorium / Molten salts reactors I have an open mind on and think it could well play a very constructive role as part of the energy mix. I’d like to see if it can be developed and am positively included to it. I’m not against new technology at all if it can be done safely and ethically and effectively.
Nuclear Hydrogen fusion with Tokamak’s (spelling?) and SF plans for cheap, easily produced energy form that as touted in a number of old SF books and essays and science fact style shows? I wish it wasn’t always 20 or 30 years away for the last since the 1950’s or 60’s or so? I’m now at the point where I’ll believe it if I actually see it and only then. Its been predicted so long so optimistically and not happened that its just become really frustrating. I’d love it if w ehad it now but until its actually here ..nah. Stop teasing us.
RTG’s – using, yes, small quantity of plutonium as used in Spacecraft like Cassini, the Voyagers & NewHoizons:? I’m definitely a fan and think they been excellent for enabling us to learn about the rest of the universe especially our solar system.
Nuclear fission reactors? Not a fan. Not totally closed minded but the issues with the use of plutonium that can be weaponised, the issue of nuclear waste and the history of safety accidents and their consequences eg. Fukushima, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island mean I’m not in favour and it also sems it would take too long to build and get them online versus other renewable options. Howveer, if the science becomes compelling enough and measures to ensure they are run safely enough, I’m willing to reconsider and see them as part of the solution to Global Overheating – altho’ NOT the sole answer for it because, well, I don’t think there is a single one answer for it for starters…
Oh and, incidentally, but Ithink worth noting here I’m a member of the Australian Greens party and, obvs, vote consistently for them.
Timely:
Radiant aims to replace diesel generators with small nuclear reactors
@ 34. GerrardOfTitanServer :
From wikipedia but still :
Bolding added.
Basically its disputed exactly how many and exactly how bad but thew most irradiated liquidators actually died pretty soon afterwards of actual radiation sickness. I don’t think you can ignore or minimise that which seems to me to be what you are doing there.. even if the rest of that says, okay, it wasn’t perhaps as bad as many people think.
From your #33 : “You post a giant wall of text filled with nonsense? How the hell am I supposed to respond to that without a greater size wall of arguments backed by citations?”
Perhaps start without calling the OP nonsense & just a giant wall of text? There were pictures included after all..
Also not sure whether to say it and whether it even works for me but multiple posts addressing each point or several points but broken up? Or picking one point at a time as your / the main one and then getting back to others later separately?
I remember you doing that – changing your nymn openly and why and agree with you there at least in that I haven’t seen you banned from anywhere on FTB. (coughs, unlike me to my regret. ) That’s a fair point – even if you slightly undermine it with your sotto voce bit in brackets afterwards.
I, for one, would rather my generation and the previous one had bequeathed my (proverbial) grandchildren a bunch of radioactive waste in casks and storage pools than an extra 200ppm of carbon dioxide in the air. (Neither would have been even better, of course.)
StevoR
Re the discrepancy. I’m not sure. One sec.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/chernobyl.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjxr8qFktfzAhWIVTABHexjCl0QFnoECDQQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3mkDLXHvfQOfp7XTvwXctm
Maybe it depends on how you define “most exposed cohort”. I suppose I could be more precise. If you take the most exposed cohort as only those that suffered ARS, then what I said was wrong. If you take a larger subset, then I’m right. Mehhh.
I should rephrase the point to something like 99% of the Chernobyl cleanup workers received less than 500 mSv (pulling that number out of my ass, would need to verify), which corresponds to an at most +2% or +3% additional chance of premature death from cancer, which is comparable to or less than typical mundane air pollution. My point here is that if the effects are so slight on most of the cleanup workers, one needs to understand that the effects from the disaster on anyone else will be much less, and effects of any nuclear waste leak will be much less still. LNT us clearly false, meaning that the effects for these other groups is zero in most cases. Only by using LNT, by assuming stuff like +0.5% increase in radiation leads to a miniscule increase in cancer, and summing up this risk over entire populations, can nuclear waste leaks be considered dangerous. But LNT is false. We have conclusive experimental results from MIT on mice, and solid epidemiological evidence from Bernard Cohen.
I am curious as to why wind power is dismissed as not feasible? It is currently supplying a significant portion of electrical power in the plains areas where wind is an ever present phenomena.
https://greatriverenergy.com/making-electricity/wind/
Hello, excellent thread this one!
I’d like to add some remarks:
1) We can consider, I think, TMI as inevitable, if you read for example this:
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2012/ph241/tran1/docs/188.pdf
I am not a reactorist, but just the sensor suite in the core was going to be conducive to trouble. No water level indicator? A flapping valve? No temp sensors beyond 300°C? Come on.
2) Chernobyl was also inevitable. That particular reactor is inherently unstable at low regimes, and very finicky (explodey) in all conditions. The wonder is that it didn’t go off earlier.
3) Fukushima however, had reactors which held together in a 9mag earthquake: unbelievable performance, and something no one would have bet a penny on. Pity for the tsunami following just after.
4) Pebble-bed gas cooled reactors are NOT in the future! They started one just now in China:
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chinas-HTR-PM-reactor-achieves-first-criticality
and they want to build eighteen of them (!), I quite like the idea of a reactor that won’t melt in a LOCA and will cool off by itself, passively: big progress. We’ll see how it goes.
5) ITER may not be thirty years ahead, first “fire” is foreseen in 2025 so fingers crossed, I am a fan of that one.
And as a personal opinion, I am of two minds about nuclear. If it can help save our asses with planetary warming it may be welcome, but it’s like shaking hands with the devil.
The bloody WASTE is a big, lethal problem which keeps being intractable, and nobody is ever serious about real mitigation (transmutation, dedicated reactors for reduction). Quien sabe?
Maybe the nuclear waste could be put on a little spacecraft that we send into the sun?
It seems like a logical solution, barring rockets exploding while on the pad or before clearing the atmosphere.
@42 getting the delta-v for that turns out to be really difficult. (You have to essentially slow down the object by the orbital velocity of the Earth, which is really big, in order to hit the sun, otherwise it’ll just orbit itself and never manage to actually fall in.)
@42
A good ref on that.
No it’s not. It has never hurt anyone and never will hurt anyone. Disposal is easy and cheap. The problem is almost entirely a myth. We know how nuclear waste behaves in deep geologic disposal because we’ve done the test and it’s been running for a few billion years. See the natural reactors in Oklo, Gabon. Nuclear waste on the planet predates humanity by billions of years. Please also see:
http://thorconpower.com/docs/ct_yankee.pdfhttps://jmkorhonen.net/2013/08/15/graph-of-the-week-what-happens-if-nuclear-waste-repository-leaks/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1996/10/the-sub-seabed-solution/308434/In particular, quote from the last source:
…
Tethys
Literally the first sentence of your source is a bald-faced lie. Re:
https://greatriverenergy.com/making-electricity/wind/I just took a look at the regional system operator for Minnesota, MISO.
https://www.misoenergy.org/markets-and-operations/real-time--market-data/market-reports/#nt=%2FMarketReportType%3ASummary%2FMarketReportName%3AHistorical%20Generation%20Fuel%20Mix%20(xls)&t=10&p=0&s=MarketReportPublished&sd=deschistorical_gen_fuel_mix_2016.xls
Circa 2016 Feb, MISO “North” had at least 10360 MW of wind capacity. At 2016, Feb, 1, around 2 PM, wind generation dropped to 31.9 MW. That’s a capacity factor for that hour of 0.3%. So, literally the first sentence of your source is flagrantly false. Was it meant as exaggeration? Hyperbole? Hard to say. I suspect not. I suspect many readers would take that claim as literally true.
Moreover, at that time, for a time window of over two days, the total wind generation in MISO “North” remained below 33% for almost every hour in that 2+ day window. And that’s the first dip that I found. I know that if I looked harder, I would find even worse periods of wind performance.
The goal is to replace fossil fuels with reliable dispatchable electricity. Wind power is basically useless to this goal because of its intermittency and common mode failure; a single high pressure system can cover most of the continent and reduce wind output to near zero for an entire week. A week’s worth of batteries is currently impossible barring a miracle breakthrough. There’s not enough land for pumped water storage. All other storage techs are way worse on cost or practicality. I could go through them one by one if you want.
In other words, adding a wind turbine to the grid past a certain limit doesn’t let you retire fossil fuel generators and maintain the same grid uptimes. It allows you to save on fuel costs – up to a certain limit, which seems to be approx 30% combined solar and wind before significant problems start occuring. This is about the point where instantaneous solar + wind generation frequently exceeds instantaneous demand, which is where we would need massive increases in transmission and storage to maintain grid uptimes while retiring more fossil fuel plants.
In particular regarding nuclear power: Most of the world’s nuclear power plants can change their output quite quickly (“load follow”), fast enough to handle the daily swing in demand between day and night. However, nuclear power plants don’t save money by scaling back from 100% to 50% power output. It takes about as much money to generate 50% output as it does 100% output. In other words, you don’t save fuel costs like you do when solar and wind displaces some fossil fuels. Consider a working solution composed primarily of nuclear with some hydro. Hydro is already going to be used as much as possible to handle the daily swing in demand. Adding a solar cell or wind turbine doesn’t let us turn retire any of the hydro plants or nuclear power plants. So, what happens? In the carefully designed so-called “deregulated markets”, adding a solar cell or wind turbine forces grid operators to buy that useless solar or wind electricity because they are forced to by law; solar and wind can be cheaper for a few hours every day, but the rest of the time they have to buy from nuclear, meaning nuclear sells less electricity, meaning that nuclear must increase its prices in order to recoup its mostly fixed operating costs. The net result is raising electricity prices for end consumers and passing money from end consumers to the solar or wind operator who is a leech on the grid providing nothing of value.
These carefully “deregulated markets” have been carefully designed in order to favor solar and wind, and by extension, natural gas, to the detriment of nuclear power and to the detriment of end consumers. The entire thing is actually pretty complicated compared to what most people think, and there are many other subtle but significant penalties to nuclear / subsidies to solar and wind which are almost never talked about, including: passing on extra transmission costs to end consumers instead of to the sources of that need (e.g. solar and wind), ditto for natural gas capacity payments, storage costs, backup costs, grid inertia and frequency control services costs, blackstart capability costs. In some places already, solar and wind operators can earn money by selling electricity at negative prices because of direct subsidies (renewable energy credits) and in some places, solar and wind operators already earn more money from these subsidies than from actually selling electricity. In some places already, natural gas operators earn more money operating in standby mode (capacity payments) compared to selling electricity in order to guarantee grid uptime because of volatile solar and wind. I can give sources so you can educate yourself if you wish. It’s really quite perverse how the deck has been stacked against nuclear power and in favor of solar, wind, and natural gas.
Horrible idea for the idea that you named. Rockets have a nasty tendency to explode. Also, it’s hideously expensive compared to much safer and easier disposal methods. Fundamentally, this is because your understanding of the dangers of nuclear waste is a thousand times bigger than the real dangers of nuclear waste. It’s not as dangerous as you think it is. Again, read this please:
http://thorconpower.com/docs/ct_yankee.pdfAnd also this:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4684-4589-3_23Full text can be found here:
http://www.ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/plutonium-bernard-cohen.htmlPlease do at least 5 minutes of wikipedia before you say that you say such things. What you wrote is manifestly nonsense because thorium / molten salt reactors are nuclear fission reactors.
Also nonsense. France converted most of their grid to nuclear in 15 years, and there was no technical reason that they couldn’t have done 100% of it in 15 years. (Other places don’t have the same industrial base, and so it might take a little longer for other countries, but not that much longer.) By contrast, many places, with Germany being the worst example, are showing us the folly of trying the same thing with solar and wind. Nuclear is faster to build because plans based on solar and wind do not work.
I said that solar and wind are wastes of time.
I hate to be a wet blanket, old buddy, but that sentence alone sinks your credibility. Most of the commenters here, quite rightly, have been nowhere near as dismissive of nuclear power as you are of wind and solar. In addition to being childish and in bad faith, that opinion is demonstrably false and puts you well behind the curve, as HUGE strides have been made with wind and solar since the entire Republitarian party dismissed both from 1980 onward. I agree that we may still need nuclear power, and therefore should invest in technology that’s both clean and effective (and, yes, lots of commie regulations to keep everyone honest, since the nuclear industry have CLEARLY not been honest without it). But we also need wind and solar, especially if present trends continue and both turn out to be even more doable than they seem to be now. (Also, as the OP said, poorer regions need simpler, safer technology that works NOW, not a centralized high-tech behemoth owned by big agencies from far outside their communities.)
Thanks xohjoh2n!
@Gerrard
I haven’t made any comment on nuclear power itself, so I will appreciate it if you limit yourself to factual responses to my comments rather than snide remarks like;
Or this
You don’t have any means to judge my understanding of the hazards, so stop being pugnacious and presumptuous.
Literally the first sentence of my link is not meant literally. The wind does blow (very consistently and carbon free) on the prairie, as evidenced by all the remains of small windmills that were commonly found on every farmstead before electrification. My grandparents converted theirs to pump water to the cattle.
My source also notes that wind energy is merely one source of our local power generation grid.
Wind power gets routed into the grid, just like all the other forms of generating electricity.
Better batteries seems like a good engineering problem to throw money at.
Nonsense. Just like I can fairly determine that a young Earth creationist is grossly ignorant without learning anything more about them, I can make the same determinations based on the things that you have said.
Pre-industrial societies ran on intermittent power. Industrial societies do not. Relying on wind and sun would mean going back to something like pre-industrial society. No internet as we know it. No 24-7 food refrigeration. This is a political impossibility – the world will never agree to it. The rich world will never agree to become poor, and the poor world will never agree to stay poor.
I’d rather we fix the problem of climate change with stuff that we know works instead of sticking our heads in the sand, waiting for a miracle. In light of the severity and immediacy of climate change, global warming, ocean acidification, sea level rise, etc., what you propose is the most irresponsible thing that I have ever heard.
heh heh heh.
Enjoy, Gerrard!
(Me, I recognise a passive-aggressive plea when I hear one.
Thanks for the clarification, Marcus! Shan’t make you bother to not bother, henceforth)
Fine Gerard, since you insist on inventing my opinions for me and being a presumptuous ass about it, you can chat to yourself. I will go do something productive, like source new led low profile lighting for my hall.
@45, Gerrard:
Ha ha, no!
Come on… I work in the sector, but one does not need to do that to know that waste can be quite dangerous. Just a few items:
– Kyshtym disaster, that was high-level waste badly stored (yes, just handling it improperly will kill ya)
– Sellafield, UK: they have the most dangerous industrial building in Europe over there, AND the second most dangerous. Pools of water gently roiling, and what’s at the bottom no one knows: nobody bothered to keep notes. Decommissioning is going to be interesting, the official plan for the Sellafield site offers a completion date for… 2140, if all goes well. If.
– Rocky Flats plant, CO: they decided to clean up the air system piping a bit, and scraped 60 pounds of plutonium off that. A sterling performance, I am sure.
So to resume: danger from waste can be contained and minimised, IF everything is done properly. Trouble is, accidents are inevitable in the long run AND there is/has been an awful amount of negligence, particularly in the sector of legacy waste, both military and civilian.
Further, true long-term storage has yet to really happen and the complete procedures are not yet established. I do hope it’s going to be done, but easy it’s not and from political side there is zero engagement, the topic being shall we say, politically lethal.
So yes, doable it may be but the money and effort necessary will be all but trivial.
Lacrime e sangue.
Gerrard:
Since it’s not a miracle and you don’t have to wait to see it “work,” I suppose you’ll need to stick your head in the sand instead of reading this article or this one.
We could do much better than that projection in the second link, to phase out natural gas and coal as quickly as possible. If more nuclear can help to do that, good — same with wind, solar, hydro, etc., which is also good.
I think we ought to nationalize the whole energy sector. As long as it all depends on where capitalists think they can make profits from their “investments,” we’re fucked. So, how many of your arguments rely on an assumption that things remain privatized? How different do the options look when this isn’t assumed?
I can fix that. Take all of our ocean water and turn it into one really big carbonated soft drink. That might cover C02 emissions for a couple years, more or less. Then, everybody would have more than enough soda to drink for the rest of our short, miserable lives. Distribution could be an issue, but we can figure that out when the time comes.
Another press release:
Could small nuclear reactors be the future of energy?
Pre-industrial societies ran on intermittent power. Industrial societies do not. Relying on wind and sun would mean going back to something like pre-industrial society. No internet as we know it. No 24-7 food refrigeration.
This, I think, goes to the root of Gerrard’s problem: he’s an exponent of a progressive era of the ’50s and ’60s, when “progress” meant big, high-tech, global-scale innovations that flat-out replaced “the old ways” and almost instantly made everyone’s lives better and richer. This was the progressive revolution that gave us telecoms, the TVA, nuclear power, jet airplanes, big mainframe computers (and ultimately the Internet), DARPA, penicillin and similar antibiotics, ICBMs, high-tech hospitals, plastics, the space program, and a whole host of other innovations that are now an integral part of our lives, at least in the West. That era also gave us thalidomide, thorazine, lobotomies, routine infant circumcision, fantasies of infinite unlimited progress, and lots of technocratic arrogance and unwarranted disdain for anything preceding this progressive era.
From Gerrard’s quotes, it seems they are among a generation of people who have latched onto that era’s principles and promises, and have become so emotionally invested in them that they are unable to recognize that those promises haven’t always been fulfilled, and that other innovations, based on other mindsets, have been developed and worked rather well since then. Seriously, Gerrard’s rhetoric, and that false dichotomy between “nuclear power for everyone” and “pre-industrial backwater,” strongly suggest an emotional/tribalistic mindset here, not a rational discussion of energy tech options. We should probably treat his comments as such.
Everyone is putting out press releases. Either they are competing with each other, or it is renewal time in their funding cycle.
The Marathon Race Toward Fusion Power Could Be Reaching a Sprint
Yes, it was totally irresponsible of me to notice that my region has built wind and solar generation projects, and they work.
Many small green generators feeding power into the grid is completely feasible and necessary! Industrial society is killing the planet.
I wonder how the Growbot project is doing? https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181212093308.htm
Why are both of my comments still “in moderation?”
Tethys
They don’t work. Solar and wind can never replace 100% of the fossil fuels. Meaning that you won’t reach your climate targets, or you’ll do it with nuclear (and hydro) plus solar and wind which will be higher cost and more toxic waste compared to skipping the solar and wind.
…
cr
I agree with the scientists when they say that renewables replacing fossil fuels is impossible barring a miracle, and that believing such nonsense is almost as bad as believing in the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy. You believe in special interest groups. I know you cited EIA, but you didn’t make arguments based off of that. You said that we could do better, aka you’re relying on special interest groups like Greanpeace et al who probably receive most of their funding from natural gas lobbies, and solar and wind manufacturers.
If you want, I can start going into the technical reasons in detail, citing papers along the way, to explain why it’s impossible, but I don’t think you care enough to listen. Let me know.
…
outis
You assert that nuclear waste is safe if properly handled. I assert that nuclear waste is really quite safe, relatively speaking, even if you don’t handle it properly, relative to other industries. Compare all of your nuclear accidents to other industries and other accidents, and it’s comparable or smaller. Compare all of the accidents you named to the Bhopal disaster or the recent Beirut, Lebanon, port explosion, or the Banqiao dam collapse. Compare the harm to humanity and the harm to wildlife between these industrial accidents, and nuclear doesn’t really stand out. Chernobyl maybe, but that’s about it.
The most dangerous building in England? Please no. If you want to talk dangerous, consider that building in the port of Beirut that blew up with the force of about 1.4 kilotons of TNT. That was a really dangerous building. By contrast, a building with a pond with spent nuclear fuel is nothing. It’s not going to hurt anyone or the environment. The worst case imaginable for that building is never going to be even close to the Beirut port explosion.
PS: Please read:
http://www.ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/plutonium-bernard-cohen.htmlNuclear waste really isn’t as dangerous as most people think it is. The LD-50 of it is not as high as people think it is compared to some other chemicals and stuff that industry deals with every day.
Was re-reading this thread, and I noticed some more pants-on-fire misinformation.
Reginald Selkirk
Marcus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000For more information, see:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/214/1/012095/pdfI’m unsure offhand whether it’s also operator-proof. What happens if the operator fails to open that valve?
It gets better though. The best design and arguments that I’ve seen in this regard is the ThorCon design, which relies on three awesome passive safety systems – one of which is analogous to the passive safety system of the AP-1000 but better.
One of the concerns in a conventional nuclear power plant is uncontrolled fission.
In a solid-fueled reactor, there are rare worries that rearrangement of the fuel can lead to prolonged criticality and prevent control rod shutdown. In a MSR, the fuel is a liquid. Any overheating will cause a specific section at the bottom of the reactor core to melt, causing the fuel liquid to drain into a new tank whose configuration is optimized against criticality. So, as long as gravity works, re-criticality is impossible. Note that this is also walk-away-safe and operator-error-safe and even malicious-operator-safe. There is nothing that the operator can do to stop the safety system from working. There is no valve that can be closed or opened. The system just works.
The next problem is the fission product decay heat removal. This is the goal of the passive safety system of the AP-1000. Again, the basic idea is to connect a water loop from the core to an open-air pond. ThorCon does it better in a several ways. For starters, they don’t cheap out; they use two open-air cooling ponds each of which is good for months, compared to AP-1000’s pool which is only good for 3 days. (Still, it’s atmospheric pressure open-air system, so it’s easy to refill the pond. Contrast that with Fukushima where the cooling water was under pressure.) Second, the ThorCon decay heat removal loop does not have valves. Their decay heat removal loop to the open-air cooling ponds is constantly running. There is no way for the operator to shut it off. Sure, they lose IIRC 1% of the heat out of this loop during regular operation, but that’s a small price to pay for being walk-away-safe, operator-error-safe, and malicious-operator-safe.
Finally, MSRs have an additional passive safety feature that pressurized water reactors don’t have: the fuel in a liquid salt. For some of the common salt choices, the nasty radioactive decay products are tightly chemically bound to the salt. It’s been posited that you could drop a bunker-buster missile into the reactor, blowing up the core, and nearly all of the nasty stuff would remain in solution in the salt. Some of that stuff only boils at like 1430 C. (The operating temperature is only 700 C.) The result of that bunker buster missile would be some hot salt spread about the area which would passively cool and solidify in place. There’s no high pressure water in the area as a vehicle to get things airborne, and AFAIK nearly all of the nasty radioactive stuff is strongly bound to the salt and won’t react with the water to go airborne – again unlike a pressurized water reactor with solid fuel elements. (All of these claims need to be tested with non-radioactive or less-radioactive isotopes to be sure, but it’s very likely true. A large exception is the radioactive iodine, but at least that completely disappears from the environment after just a few months. Also, because they have an offgas system that moves the iodine to a container separate from the core, the iodine inventory in the core is typically pretty low.)
We can do things a lot better than your pathetic imaginations. I am being so snide because all of this is easy to discover, but you two are so intellectually lazy that you didn’t bother. Worse, you mistook your imagination as knowledge and you confidently proclaimed it to be true. Shame on both of you. Special shame on you again Marcus. Again, you should know better than to make shit up like this that’s so trivial to research.
See also, the same sort of passive decay heat removal system in the IFR, the research program in the US that was close to commercialization before Clinton shut it down for no good reason.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0149197096000042I make this post to point out that this isn’t even cutting edge new tech. This paper is over 20 years old. This is common knowledge among nuclear aficionados. Again, Marcus, you don’t know what the fuck you are talking about. Sit down, shut up, and start listening.
PPS:
Please Marcus. Educate yourself. There’s very little that you say which isn’t at least partially wrong.
In this case, there are plenty of small and smaller (micro?) modular reactor concepts out there. Again, one of the most mature options is ThorCon. Plop the reactor on a barge. It fulfills many of the claims of the pebble bed reactors, except it has the added benefit that it will actually work (probably, I’m 90% confident). Take a moment to review their sales pitch. Here’s text or youtube, whichever you prefer.
https://thorconpower.com/docs/domsr20180119.pdfhttps://thorconpower.com/docs/docs_v140_isle.pdfPortable nuclear is as real as windmills.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_submarine
Because I was away from my keyboard for a couple days.
Gerrard:
Well, I do believe they exist … including pro-nuclear ones, of course. Do you believe in those?
I think the implications were pretty clear. While nuclear has been slowly declining and is projected to continue on that path over the next thirty years, renewables make up a larger share today and are projected to double in that same time period. Yet you keep suggesting renewables simply don’t work, which is demonstrably false and more than a little ridiculous.
It’s as if you believe that, in order to attack anti-nuclear types, you must therefore attack that set of technologies. But they are not those people, and they are not in any sense “anti-nuclear” technologies. They’re part of the mix that can help us phase out fossil fuels. If that is your real goal, as it should be, then you should be welcoming all of the help we can get. It’s as simple as that.
Just pulling this out of your ass, I guess. If Greenpeace vanished right this minute, it would not change a single thing that I’ve said. (As for what you only imagine me saying, I have no control over that.)
You don’t need to explain why we need to do it only with renewables. For the hundredth time, I am on board with nuclear, so just stop pretending otherwise and get to the real argument you have with me (and most of the other people on FTB), not an argument you’ve prepared for some other person with a different set of views.
Suppose renewables make up 42% of electricity generation in 2050. Then, you could only be “explaining” that it’s impossible for nuclear to make up the other 58%. But obviously, that’s not what you want to say, because your argument has been that we should avoid practically all renewables, with maybe some small exceptions as necessary, so that nuclear should be closer to 100%…. I’ll say 90% just to have something specific. Notice how it would need to be at least 58, in order to be 90 or above. So what exactly are you arguing against?
To give you some kind of semi-coherent alternative, let’s be as pessimistic as possible about them and suppose that renewables will have to remain at 21% as they are now. So, we’ve reached the peak, and for some obscure reason there simply can’t be any more growth in that respect, despite the fact that other countries do already use renewables much more extensively than the US does. (Also, hypothetically, if lots of new plants were built, you could claim nuclear is capable of supplying the other 79%.) Even if you do think we should be that pessimistic, 21% is still not nothing, and you definitely can’t go around saying that is what is impossible. If you think you can give me some kind of bullshit calculation (with “technical details”) that renewables can’t do as much as we know they’re already doing right now, then just throw it away and don’t bring it up again.
So what are you even trying to argue? “Greens = bad, nuclear = good” isn’t going to do it for me. How about you try something else?
Correction: “You don’t need to explain why we can’t do it only with renewables.”
Also, I don’t need to explain why we need to do it only with renewables, since I’ve never argued that.
Sorry; I did not expect to drop this posting and then be away, but some stuff came up. Sorry about that.
Textwall follows:
GerrardOfTitanServer@#33:
What the fuck Marcus? You post a giant wall of text filled with nonsense? How the hell am I supposed to respond to that without a greater size wall of arguments backed by citations? You should know that someone replying to a Gish Gallop frequently requires more time to respond compared to the initial Gish Gallop. If that’s the rules for engagement, why the hell should I even bother?
I already told you you could fuck off, so “why the hell should I even bother”, indeed.
But, a couple of things – first off, there is no “rules for engagement” here and it’s a blog. Expect “text walls” (or, what I call “a posting”) periodically. Also, I don’t owe you or anyone a hearing, any more than any of the rest of the commentariat(tm) owe you or each other or me a hearing. That is the reason why people sometimes complain when a comment-thread gets hijacked by someone who comes along with an attempt to trample everyone with their ideology. In this case, I clearly marked this as your thread to go ahead and comment until hell freezes over, so I don’t see your complaint.
Characterizing my posting as a “gish gallop” is either stupid or dishonest, depending on whether you really think that (=stupid) or were just saying that in some attemptt to score a few bloggy rhetoric-points (=dishonest). A “gish gallop” (in case you don’t know) depends on a debate format in which the debater is trying to overload their opponent’s time. Here, I’ve given you all the text and time in the world, so you can hardly say I’m making outrageous claims you don’t have time to reply to.
You’re also using a really boring rhetorical technique of well-poisoning that is hateful to me, though I will not try to stop you from doing it. My belief is that it just makes you look bad, so it’s your problem and doesn’t bother me. I’m referring to Sam Harris-esque verbal flourishes like your:
You post a giant wall of text filled with nonsense?
If it’s nonsense, it should be really easy for you to demonstrate that, without trying to pre-condition the reader’s idea in the direction that I am dealing in nonsense or, worse, being dishonest. I don’t know about you, but I believe that when Sam Harris does that, he’s being deliberately dishonest, himself, trying to bolster what are often shabby arguments by putting his thumb ever-so-subtly on the scale, first.
To forestall accusations that I am being biased: yes, this is a blog and it constitutes my opinion; think of it as a sort of editorial column for a newspaper that belongs to me, if you will. I try as hard as I can to be interesting and honest and mostly fair, though I absolutely reserve the right to be opinionated, hyperbolic, or even verbally abusive if I see fit. This is not a debating club. I am generally interested in the opinions (and facts from..) the commentariat(tm) but I am not infinitely interested, which is why I sometimes feel perfectly justified in stopping following a particular topic.
Fucking lies. I changed my name once because I wanted to avoid the negative connotations of “EnlightmentLiberal”, and I was very open about it, posting both names for an extnded period of time on all of my posts, and I used the same account to do it. I’ve never been banned from anywhere on FreeThoughtBlogs (to my surprise as well some days).
A mistake. As I said before, I don’t follow some people very carefully and I’ve seen you drag enough comment exchanges into the weeds of your particular obssession that I don’t follow you as a person; I had no idea what other ‘nym you had but I was aware that you had changed and I assumed it was because you managed to get banned somewhere else. Which, it sounds like, wouldn’t surprise either of us. So that was the mistake I made.
For what it’s worth, I very seldom look at a commenter’s email address (though that is available to me if I want to) and I tend to assume that a ‘nym is not a real person – the consequence of too many years of role-playing games and a lot of playing on MUDs in the 80s.
Anyhow; an honest mistake, for what that’s worth. You’ll notice I’m not going to lie and say “I’m sorry” because it doesn’t matter that much to me.
Jesus Fuck. You want me to engage with you after you treat me like this? Da fuck. I think I’ll pass.
Then don’t! And I didn’t want to engage with you. I wanted to dump on your ideas. If you want to defend them, you’re welcome to.
GerrardOfTitanServer@#:
I agree that it’s a social justice issue. That’s why I’m fighting against people like you who spread gross misinformation on this topic, such as you.
Right-o, “misinformation” eh? If you start any of that shit about wanting to throw me in the ocean, I’m not just going to ban you, I’ll delete all the comments you’ve spent so much time posting, thereby wasting all your effort. So, I suggest you don’t think of this or treat this as a fight because in fight terms it’s like a land war in Asia (you know how to win a land war in Asia, right? Be Asian).
Let me assure you, for what it’s worth, that I am trying to be honest about ideas, and am not interested in pushing propaganda in service of any particular agenda. I’m not agenda-free, neither are you, but I’m too proud to lie in order to score points on a silly internet blog. I can’t expect you to show my the courtesy to assume I mean truth, but I wish you would.
Most climate scientists agree with me that nuclear must be a significant part of the answer
You’re arguing with the wrong person, then. I’ve repeatedly said that I think we should throw everything we have at the problem, and that includes nuclear. Get that into your thick skull. In fact, most of the commenters in this thread have expressed views similar to mine. So repeatedly saying “we need nuclear” gets a resounding “YES!” from the studio audience and maybe you could shut a little bit the fuck up about that. You’ve made that point and we agree with you – so your characterization of “greens” who need to be dropped in the ocean, or whatever, is inaccurate and you’re not going to win people over to your viewpoint on that topic because they already agree with you.
some, like Dr. Kerry Emanuel, have gone further and explicitly said that we should stop wasting money on solar and wind
I made what I think is a pretty good argument for why it’s not a bad idea: it’s timely, it’s cheap, and it works. I don’t give a used buttplug what Kerry Emanuel thinks – why don’t you explain how it’s neither timely, cheap, or functional?
Unfortunately, this topic has become so fraught and is full of paid liars (as you may have noticed) that I am reluctant to go reading other peoples’ cherry-picked sources. I’m basing my opinion on, you know, the people I know who have gone off the commercial grid and are happy not to be helping fund fossil fuel polluting power plants. I’m not going to accept Kerry Emanuel’s assertions any more than yours. The guy sounds like a crank, if you’re characterizing them as being one of the people who say that “greens” are helping cause climate change. As I said before, I reject your notion that there is such a thing as this “green” label you wish to apply to people, especially me or the people in the commentariat. Let me give an example: a “green” perhaps is someone who is resolutely anti-nuclear, right? If that is a component of being a “green” then there are no “greens” here and then you can stop your lazy attempts to argue by demonizing people with labels.
I never said that hydro is a waste of time. I said that solar and wind are wastes of time.
In the context where I was saying “we should throw everything we’ve got at the problem” I don’t see how you can say you didn’t mean hydro, when you said that approach was not going to work. “throw everything we’ve got at the problem” means fucking everything including nuclear and hydro and yes, I’m not surprised that you haven’t been able to find some dipshit with a PhD who says hydro doesn’t work.
You seem unable to tell the difference. I can.
Oh, that’s crap and you know it. I mean, I know you can tell the difference but you’re so busy saying all the other stuff is a waste of time that I’m not sure you’re always so careful in your choice of words. If you were being intellectually honest you’d be saying “hydro and nuclear are the way to go!” but … you’re not saying that. And I haven’t gotten to the part where you tell us what’s wrong with wind power but I’m looking forward to that part.
You argued for the feasibility of solar, wind, and wave power by citing the success of hydro power. That’s a non-sequitur. It’s an obviously fallacious argument. Again, it seems like you can’t tell the difference between the different technologies.
Be serious. Of course I can tell the difference between the technologies. I lump them together under the category of “throw everything at it” and no, I did not condescend to argue about whether a hydro dam is better than a wave generation system or whatever. “Throw everything at it.” What about that don’t you understand? And before you argue that reality is a zero-sum game, in terms of planetary technology and national budgets, that’s simply not the case. As I’ve said before, if we can afford F-35s we can afford to experiment with a lot of stuff, and we should. I’m going to say that you’re stepping dangerously close to mis-characterizing my argument. And, as I’ve said before – experiment, research, and improve also includes nuclear of all types.
Your cited an example of rooftop solar and battery packs. I am unfamiliar with that exact case offhand.
Wait. Are you kidding me? You don’t understand that for about $10,000 a homeowner can put solar power in that is sufficient to take them off the grid permanently? You really don’t know that? Do you live under a box somewhere, or something? Seriously, it’s a vibrant and interesting area of research and it’s a technology that can be deployed easily, inexpensively, and relatively quickly. You really don’t know that? If that’s true then you’re too ignorant to comment about energy systems at all because all of your cost/benefit analysis for nuclear is based on false premises and we’re done arguing because you need to go back to school.
Note that solar cells are probably so cheap today because half of them, approx, are probably made with Uighur slave labor in China.
Wait, I thought you said you don’t know anything about that use case…?
I don’t give a shit where the solar panels have come from. That’s stupid. Solar panels are going to be made wherever they are cheap, and that’s going to mean slave labor or capitalism-style indentured servitude. It’s a pointless point that you’re making because it’s going to be low-cost labor pouring the concrete for a nuke, or extracting the steel or uranium. Spare the Marxist critique; I never said solar or wind or hydro are more moral than nuclear power – because that’d be a laughable argument. Except that appears to be the argument you are just now making. I’m not saying “fuck the Uighurs” but realistically, all this stuff is going to be built by low-paid labor; that’s how to make it cheap. Those are the “green jobs” and I’m not really thrilled about that but let’s stay focused on the climate crisis and not try to re-structure the entire civilization at the same time (though the two are connected; I’ll do a post about that eventually).
To the extent that that the rooftop solar + batteries work, a nuclear + grid solution would be much at least 10x cheaper and produce less harmful toxic materials.
I think I understand your problem: you don’t actually read what other people write, or you don’t understand it. The point about availability is that a poor family in Puerto Rico can somehow afford panels (that must say something about the cost of the panels) and have power right now instead of waiting for nuclear power that will never happen. What about “nobody is ever going to build a nuclear reactor in Puerto Rico” did not sink into your head? And, if nobody is ever going to build a nuclear reactor in Puerto Rico then what the fuck is wrong with them using hydro, panels, and fucking bicycle-powered generators if that’s what it takes?
My friend Mike G. took a Washington DC suburban home to panels and batteries. His original expectation was to replace grid power for winter heat but it turns out that they are selling energy to the grid and they get a check every couple months from the power company. Of course that is subsidized. But what the fuck is wrong with self-sufficiency today that is paying for itself instead of waiting for a nuclear power plant that may never happen? Specifics on that are that they were remodeling their kitchen and did a loan to cover the cost, and bumped $20,000 on top of that for a solar system. It has already been paid off and now they’re making money on it. Of course it is subsidized but that’s one more self-sufficient house that is not powered second-hand by fossil fuels being burned. Washington’s power probably comes from Joe Manchin’s coal :( I don’t know that for a fact; I’m scared to look.
https://blogs.edf.org/energyexchange/2019/11/15/long-considered-a-clean-energy-source-hydropower-can-actually-be-bad-for-climate/
Did you seriously buy that load? Because their argument is that hydro plants are going to produce carbon because of decomposition products in the water behind the dam when it’s built. Yeah, OK, that part is probably true but plants are going to produce decomposition products anywhere plants decompose – it’s not specifically a problem with hydro it’s a problem with plants. What a load of decomposing pond algae that article is. I could just as easily say “hey but dams are a great habitat for fish or whatever” but that’s stupid. Sure, hydro has ecological implications but so does climate change and “throw everything at the problem” means yes we need to see if we can make hydro better. For example, I know some folks who are looking at using a reservoir lake on a mountain as a hydro battery: use low-powered thermal systems and rain to move water to reservoir and then let it run hydro power when the grid needs stored energy from the drop. Is it efficient? I don’t know but I hope they find out. Is it a perfect solution? I don’t know but I hope they improve it or discard it if it doesn’t work out.
Remember that the climate crisis is being mostly caused by CO2 and methane from burning fossil fuels. Reducing that is job #1. Sure cow farts are a substantial source of methane, too, but for fuck’s sake the governments of the world are still busy stealthily “drill baby drill” and getting humanity off fossil fuels is more important than specious arguments about how pond scum is also a carbon emitter.
probably doesn’t supply anything close to 24-7 power, and if it does, it would be extremely expensive.
If poor folks in Puerto Rico can set up panels to power their laptops and phones and lights, how can you possibly assert it would be extremely expensive? You can do some research, and you’ll find some people who found it expensive and some who didn’t. But you’re still stacking up not-yet-available and maybe-never-available nuclear power against something that works here and now.
In fact your whole premise that nuclear power is cheaper is based on the false logic that nuclear power will and can be built cheaper. I am sure you know that the cost of building nuclear reactors has gone way up because “greens” have been insisting that they not do things like build reactors on fault lines or with bad safety practices (like building in a tsunami zone) – that raises the cost. I’m not too credulous when people say that nuclear is cheaper because sometimes you dig down and find out they are comparing a hypothetical reactor from 30 years in the future against an existing hydro dam that was built in 1940.
It’s dangerous to compare a nuclear power plant in the bush (as the saying goes) against a home solar system that is actually on the roof right now, paying for itself and getting another home off the fossil fuel-powered grid. The comparison is not accurate.
Because of the lack of suitable topology, it’s unlikely that hydro capacity could double worldwide, meaning that hydro, while good and useful, is a rounding error in terms of the total energy production that we need.
That’s not a reason not to do it. “Throw everything we’ve got at the problem” including nuclear.
I’m also not sure I buy any arguments that imply that we’ve perfected hydro dams and there’s no upgrades that could be wrung out of them. I know location is a big problem, but I have always wondered why dams don’t feed other dams, etc.
I also notice that you completely failed to engage with my point regarding Norwegian hydro. There’s a whole country that powers a lot of itself with hydro, and has an excess of places where they could build plants. What’s wrong with that? You say it’s not enough and it’s not significant but that seems kind of specious when we’re talking about a whole country that has made hydro a substantial and unobtrusive part of its grid. Tell me again how that’s a bad idea, and please don’t talk about the carbon-emitting pond scum at the top of the fjords because there isn’t any.
Geothermal is good in a few isolated areas AFAIK, but that success does not extrapolate to most areas.
I’ve been to a geothermal plant in Iceland. It’s pretty darned cool. Most of the island’s power is free geothermal. So are the heated sidewalks, home heat in the highlands, and hot water heat. It’s damn cool. What’s wrong with that?
Remember: I’ve been saying nuclear is also a thing we should be doing. We are agreed on that point. But you’re saying the other stuff is no good, because you’re such a rabid pro-nuclear ${I don’t know what} that you want to argue against other forms of power – just like those “greens” you hate so much except in the opposite direction.
You’re in a really stupid position, argument-wise, because you have to basically argue against other practical solutions, in order to promote your preference. Remember, you’re talking to a roomful of people who also think nuclear power is a good option if it’s done safely and it’s cost-effective. We already mostly agree with you, except for the jackass way you insist on coming in and beating people over the head with a distorted view of the situation, and calling for the destruction of these “greens” you seem to imagine some of us are.
However, nuclear power plants don’t save money by scaling back from 100% to 50% power output. It takes about as much money to generate 50% output as it does 100% output. In other words, you don’t save fuel costs like you do when solar and wind displaces some fossil fuels.
That’s a stupid argument. I mean, it’s true, but it’s still stupid. One of the things that has always bothered me about these energy arguments is that they assume backward compatible stupidity with existing stupidity for new systems. I agree that old systems have to be backward compatible because they work, but why not build a nuclear plant next to a dam and use the spare power and the cooling cycle from the plant to move water from below the dam to above the dam so that energy can be (inefficiently but still…) recaptured later? I haven’t studied the topic but I bet that there are a lot smarter ways of building hydro systems, just like everything else. How many turbines can you spin with a single dam? Does the dam have to be limited to natural replenishment, etc. And, also, if we’re going to say (as we should) that humans need to engineer new and better nuclear plants, let’s also posit that humans need to engineer new and better hydro and solar and wind systems. I.e.: what I have been saying all along: “throw everything we’ve got at the problem.” It’s not reasonable to assume that nuclear plants are going to get much much better (they will) without also assuming hydro, wind, and solar are going to get much much better (they will).
You mentioned the dangers of radiation leaking into the groundwater. This is largely another Green inspired myth that you’re repeating here.
No, I was referring specifically to the concern from nuclear engineers during the Chernobyl cleanup that the reactor core was going to melt its way through the floor and it was going to poison the groundwater. Right next to the reactor complex is a river; there’s lots of groundwater. It’s a real danger.
Also, that reminds me of another point, which I’d appreciate if you’d address regarding Chernobyl. The USSR at the time was not a particularly humanitarian place; it would not have been out of character for the leaders of the USSR to decide “ah, fuck them” if the radiation were not an actual threat. See what I mean? Instead, what they did was a massive and expensive clean-up to reduce the radiation level down to the point where scientists deemed it OK. Presumably those scientists were the “greens” you keep talking about? But, seriously, doesn’t the fact that the soviets engaged in a protracted, expensive, and time-consuming clean-up sort of a tacit admission that it was worth cleaning up? And I’m sure you know that the EU just spent a huge amount of money upgrading the casement over the blown reactor. Presumably that’s another tacit admission that it is worth worrying about or are they just a bunch of hand-wringing “greens” you want to drop in the ocean?
Re proliferation. I agree that this is a big concern.
I don’t think it’s a big problem. But the US government and other members of the nuclear monopoly do. So, what they think matters more than what I think, since I am not a nuclear super-power. On times when I think about it, I wonder if the world would be better if every small country menaced by an imperialist power were given a few small nuclear weapons as a deterrent. It’d damn sure adjust the US’ foreign policy. But it’d probably make the world a more dangerous place because then the US would really go apeshit with its existing first-strike plans. I mention proliferation because it’s a real consideration to the global power elite who want to restrict the ability of the global poor to defend themselves.
That whole issue is irrelevant to whether or not nuclear power is any good; but it complicates its availability, which is some axis or other of goodness.
If the risk is that small for being among the most heavily irradiated cohort of cleanup workers at Chernobyl, then the risk from nuclear waste leakage must be truly minuscule.
So then why did the Soviets clean it up? They don’t seem to be a stereotypical bunch of “greens” though I agree they should have been dropped into an ocean.
Also: when I say that I want nuclear reactors to be safer and I have concerns, I’m not saying “no nuclear reactors” just things like “don’t build them on fault lines or over aquifers” and maybe humans could put a bit more thought into making the technology better and better means safer. Like I said, I’d love to see fusion energy (will we still have a technological civilization in 30 years?) or “pebble bed” reactors, whatever those are.
What I don’t think we can is wait for 15-20 years to build nuclear megastructures or wait 30 years for fusion and then 15-20 years for fusion megastructures. Go ahead and blame the “greens” if you like, but I think that a certain amount of blame should go to the engineers who said, basically, “trust us, it’ll be cheap and easy” and it was neither.
Reginald Selkirk@#57:
Everyone is putting out press releases. Either they are competing with each other, or it is renewal time in their funding cycle.
The Marathon Race Toward Fusion Power Could Be Reaching a Sprint
I have been seeing those, too. There are a couple things I think are going on…
Universities since the 80s and probably before have increasingly been involved in a role of tech incubators (probably since Cisco Systems started at Stanford) – I have personally been involved with several university faculty who were trying to attract venture capital so they could semi spin-off businesses under the umbrella of the university, with the university getting a smallish cut, naturally. It looks to me like that’s what’s going on at MIT: they’re doing PR about their development because they think they’ll be able to attract venture capital and “if it works we’ll all be rolling in dough.”
There is something to be said for getting the capitalists involved in funding tech, since the government’s interest is mostly in making expensive war machines. There’s a lot of tech that comes from that, but it doesn’t always produce useful results. (stealth iPhones?) My problem with that scenario is that capitalists don’t actually believe that “free market” shit they talk about. If MIT manages to make headway on fusion, sure they’ll be happy to pocket tons of money. But if it fails? They’ll be asking for government bail out, sure as shit is full of bacteria.
consciousness razor@#66:
So what are you even trying to argue? “Greens = bad, nuclear = good” isn’t going to do it for me. How about you try something else?
It appears that the situation is similar to arguing with the many christians who believe that convincing someone that evolution is not right, is proof of the existence of their god. I’m not sure what the term for that is, is it a “category error”?
GerrardOfTitanServer:
Just like I can fairly determine that a young Earth creationist is grossly ignorant without learning anything more about them, I can make the same determinations based on the things that you have said.
That’s why I think you’re an ignorant, dishonest, asshole.
Labels are fascinating when it comes to something as vague as “greens.” Who exactly are they?
In Europe we have some political parties that use the word “green” in their name, and their policies sure differ immensely just within the European Union. For example, Latvian party with the word “green” in its name has no strict political stances except for their desire to further enrich their oligarch leader.
Maybe “greens” are people who proclaim that they care about the environment? (Let’s first ignore the problem that such people cannot even agree what exactly constitutes the “environment” that needs protecting.) If so, then you just need to put at least two self-proclaimed environmentally conscious people inside a room and let them have a discussion about topics like how to manage waste or how to grow food or what kind of clothes humanity ought to produce. It will instantly become obvious that disagreements among people who claim to be environmentally conscious are immense and they cannot agree about anything. Personally, I have been in plenty such discussions, and I sure disagreed with everybody else in the room about something. From organic cotton to disposal of plastic bottles to dietary choices to electricity generation—people who claim to care about the environment cannot agree about anything.
Thus the notion that there exist some unified “greens” with a clearly specific agenda seems highly unlikely for me unless these “greens” are defined as a small group who operate within a single geographical location. For example, with appropriate evidence, I would be willing to believe that, for example, fossil fuel lobbyists within the USA have a unified goal and similar talking points (I haven’t researched American lobbying practices, so I am taking a semi-wild guess here.)
But accusing every random stranger online of being some mystical “green” and ascribing to them an extremely specific set of beliefs is ridiculous.
Even Christians, despite their millennia old tradition of authority figures forcing upon members a ready-made set of strict beliefs, cannot agree with each other about anything. Just put a German protestant, an American fundamentalist, and a Russian Orthodox believer in the same room, and watch them verbally tear each other apart.
But no, “greens” somehow managed something that no group of people can possibly achieve—a large global movement with a strict set of beliefs and goals. Yeah right.
Now that I think about it, antivaxxers are an example of how globally people cannot agree about anything. There are Russian antivaxxers talking about how every vaccine other than Sputnik V is bad. There are those who oppose vaccine mandates but don’t care if others choose to get vaccinated. There are those who believe that vaccines are ineffective and some pharmaceutical company plot to make a quick cash grab. Then there are those who believe that vaccines cause various health problems like infertility. And then there are those who believe that vaccines kill. Or contain microchips. Or whatever else. And here we have such diverse groups of people with the rather simple idea “vaccines – bad.”
Once you take a much more complicated core idea like “let’s protect the environment,” internal disagreements are bound to become much more diverse and complicated.
Speaking of which, a core idea like “let’s use lots of nuclear energy” is also bound to generate a lot of internal disagreement among people who agree with this idea. Personally, I agree with the basic idea “let’s use lots of nuclear energy,” but I do not share nowhere near the exact same set of beliefs as GerrardOfTitanServer.
Marcus:
Brazil has tons of hydro too: more than 70% of its electricity in 2018. (China by the way has more hydro power in absolute terms and is #1 in the world in that sense — Brazil is #2 — but it is a smaller fraction of the total there. China’s just a very big place.)
Note that Brazil is the sixth largest country in the world by population, so this is no small thing, as some might think of Norway. Also, it’s not a rich European one and doesn’t have any those advantages. The fact is, once a hydroelectric dam is constructed, it offers cheap reliable electricity for a very long time, basically for as long as people are interested in doing a little routine maintenance on it.
Related to that: I does seem to be the case that hydro can mean significant methane emissions in certain situations:
So, tropical lowland rainforests or wetlands are at least problematic. Is that most of the planet? Nope. And I think hydro is generally a lot better than nuclear in terms of greenhouse gases, when you look at the whole lifetime of a facility, including constructing it, obtaining and refining and disposing fuel, its eventual decommissioning, and so forth.
And if you’re concerned about how workers are treated (as was the concern with solar), they don’t require much of a workforce at all after they’re built. At that point, there’s just not much for anyone to do. No mining or transporting fuel, etc. So, back of the envelope, I bet there’s around 1000 metric fucktons more exploitation of workers in the nuclear industry. Is that an argument against nuclear? No, it’s an argument against capitalism. If people can’t imagine nuclear (or whatever industry) working in any other way, then they just have very poor imaginations.
consciousness razor@#75:
it has been noted that the reservoirs of power plants produce substantial amounts of methane.
All the land that’s going to get flooded as the waters rise is also going to produce substantial amounts of methane. In that respect, we’re fucked.
I really think we should (humanity, collectively, not the readers of this blog “we”) be focused on the clearly stated intent of most big governments to continue (albeit at an allegedly increasingly slow pace) ramping the exploitation of fossil fuels. Everyone with any sense is saying “cut back, cut back!” and they’re all saying, “we’re gonna start cutting back Real Soon Now” and by that I fear they mean “when the tap runs dry”
GerrardOfTitanServer@#63:
Please Marcus. Educate yourself. There’s very little that you say which isn’t at least partially wrong.
Give me a break. You insist on characterizing the stuff I say as “wrong” when it’s not. Some of it is arguable, but argue, then.
Case in point:
In this case, there are plenty of small and smaller (micro?) modular reactor concepts out there.
Where can I buy one of these? Because if it’s just a bunch of animated powerpoints of an idea someone’s got that they’re going to be able to build in 30 years it does not exist, for all intents and purposes.
If this stuff exists, why isn’t it being rolled out all over the place? “Because it doesn’t exist” seems like a likely answer. Otherwise, you can point me to all the articles about various municipalities that have deployed such systems, right?
The best design and arguments that I’ve seen in this regard is the ThorCon design, which relies on three awesome passive safety systems – one of which is analogous to the passive safety system of the AP-1000 but better.
Sounds great. I know 2 billionaires who are investing in power systems. Maybe I can talk them into buying one and we can put the local power company out of business. Right? Or does the ThorCon maybe not exist?
Meanwhile, in reality-land, there are windmills going up on ridgelines all over this area. I count 20 around Altoona. And I know of several solar parks that are being specced out. This is stuff that is available today and is being deployed right now. Nobody here is saying “let’s not do nuclear” – but where is the fucking super duper clean nukes that you’re comparing renewables against to their detriment? Be realistic here; I can make up some bunch of powerpoints regarding my super-duper hydro bottle spinner that will be amazing in 30 years when we iron the kinks out, but I’m not going to be a blockhead going around the internet telling people “don’t waste your time on other stuff because when my thing is finally available your problems will all be solved.”
Reginald Selkirk@#36:
Timely:
Radiant aims to replace diesel generators with small nuclear reactors
The article ends with the following sentence:
If it existed they’d be selling like cheese danish, if the price was remotely reasonable.
Here’s the problem, I think: there are a huge number of smart people who are doing what I advocate and throwing everything we’ve got at the problem. Some of them will maybe wind up producing great reliable affordable nuclear systems and they will be rewarded with the sky’s the limit riches. In the meantime, they’re producing aspirational powerpoints and press releases, because that’s how the capitalist tech market has evolved to work: pre-release results that are purely aspirational.
I predict that there well be at least 2, maybe 3, Theranos-style scamcorps around the cheap power/fusion/nuclear business. Investors will be bilked for billions. They will do more damage than all the “greens” can conjure, if only by diverting funds and effort into Lamborghinis and blow.
Meanwhile, established alternative energy tech is pretty well-understood. If someone walks up on me and tries to sell me a factory-load of solar panels, I know to ask about efficiency, durability, and I can – you know – get one and measure its output. I don’t have to rely on powerpoint science.
Andreas Avester@#74:
Now that I think about it, antivaxxers are an example of how globally people cannot agree about anything.
Yup; they’re a perfect example of the pyrrhonian “mode of disputation” – i.e.: “there are a lot of people who disagree on this topic, so it seems unlikely that there is an absolutely clear and obvious truth.” Urr, well, maybe antivaxxers aren’t the best example of rationality.
It will instantly become obvious that disagreements among people who claim to be environmentally conscious are immense and they cannot agree about anything. Personally, I have been in plenty such discussions, and I sure disagreed with everybody else in the room about something. From organic cotton to disposal of plastic bottles to dietary choices to electricity generation—people who claim to care about the environment cannot agree about anything.
Yup. That’s why, I’m afraid, a lot of people (myself included) use available markets as a proxy for agreement: the cost/effectiveness of a solution is often an apparent argument for its goodness. Of course the economists will point out that there are “externalities” – you know, oil looked pretty good for powering naval vessels because it’s a whole lot easier to move than coal – but it turned out that there were some concealed downsides.
As annoying as it can be, I suppose that this is part of establishing agreement and how it’s done.
The renewable energy generation in Minnesota has been largely built to replace aging coal burning power plants. We also have two nuclear plants, both of which use the Mississippi River for coolant purposes. Since the Prairie Island site is within the floodplain, stores it’s spent fuel on site, and just *happens* to be adjacent to an Indian reservation, it is rightly subject to stringent regulation and even pays some restitution to the tribe to mitigate the issues it had created.
I have to admit I’ve wondered often if a bit of eco-terrorism aimed at making coal and gas plants more expensive (just by forcing them to be guarded against sabotage) would help nudge the cost/benefit equation a bit in a more favorable direction. I have wondered, also, about things like the tar sands pipelines, which are already on the edge of not profitable – forcing the operators to spend more on security would push them underwater. Since the US government, for one example, is continuing to ignore the will of the people, it might be justifiable. I’m not sure if it’ll come to that, but I admit that when I saw them spraying water on the Standing Rock protesters I thought that was a good idea. I mean spraying oil on oil execs.
Hmm, that’s a new glitch in my attempts to post a link to a source.
https://energynews.us/2020/05/26/facing-coal-plant-closure-minnesota-provider-seeks-cleaner-path/
It took cities declining to renew their contracts to buy the output of dirty coal plants. No eco-terrorism was involved, it has been public pressure to invest in renewables that got all the wind and solar projects built and running.
@ 47. GerrardOfTitanServer :
Okay, fair cop. I meant Uranium fission reactors by that but didn’t type that so, yeah. So, again, my views nuclear wise depending on type :
Uranium fission reactors – not a fan.
Thorium / non-Uranium fission reactors – perhaps if the technologycan be developed as some people say and as for instance China is doing. I can see potential for that form of nuclear power to work really well maybe.
RTG’s as used by NASA – excellent.
Oh and I’m a Green party member and NOT someone who has blanket opposition to nuclear power in all its forms just some justified and commonly held understandings of some issues with some forms of it and thus finds your over-simplified, caracature demionisation of the “Greens” ( whcich and who?) here pretty absurd and wildly inaccurate. A point you notably didn’t seem to respond too.
Cherry-picking much? You seem to say that in Country X (France) Uranium fusion reactors were successfully and in country Y (Germany) Z (renewables) didn’t work thus everywhere the same applies for X & Y and Z will always be true. I do not think this follows and you ignore local & regional factors that can (not necessarily willbut can) equally result in the opposite results.
Eg.
Source : https://reneweconomy.com.au/world-first-south-australia-achieves-100pct-solar-and-lowest-prices-in-australia/
Then also see :
Source : https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower-idUSKBN1W909J
Both those articles also seem to refute your last sentence there :
Turns they they already do and the renewables technology is still improving – see :
https://theconversation.com/these-3-energy-storage-technologies-can-help-solve-the-challenge-of-moving-to-100-renewable-electricity-161564
Marcus
Thanks for the apology.
Forgive me for now for not addressing everything, but I think it would be best to focus on this one point, this one error, from which all other errors seem to flow. (If you really do wish for me to address other points, please repeat them, and I will.)
You want to focus on numbers, and so let’s focus on numbers. Apologies for the inevitable calculation typos.
AFAIK, current residential rooftop photovoltaic system prices are, generously, 2.5 USD / 1 watt nameplate. How much does 10k USD buy? Assuming 20% capacity factor, that’s 4 KW nameplate, or 800 W daily average. That sounds good enough for a house on the smaller side for electricity only, aka if you exclude indoor heating and cooking energy because it’s from natural gas. Did you mean to disconnect from the natural gas system too? That seems like a major oversight. Or you’re assuming an extremely energy efficient and extremely low energy usage house.
…
Scenario 1
800 daily average is not terribly useful by itself. You have an excess for about 6 hours every day, and basically nothing for the rest of the day. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Duck_Curve_CA-ISO_2016-10-22.agr.pngfor an example production curve for the different hours of a day. If you’re serious about going off-grid without fossil fuels, that means batteries.Generously, the cost of Li-ion batteries is 140 USD / 1 KWh nameplate with a 10 year lifetime.
To maintain the same kind of uptime as offered by the grid, you would need at least 3 weeks of storage. I’m taking that conclusion from this paper:
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2018/ee/c7ee03029khttps://kencaldeira.wordpress.com/2018/03/01/geophysical-constraints-on-the-reliability-of-solar-and-wind-power-in-the-united-states/Time to calculate costs.
Rooftop solar:
… Upfront costs:
= (800 W) (2.5 USD / 1 watt nameplate) (1 / 20% capacity factor)
= 10k USD
… Yearly recurring costs:
= upfront costs / lifetime
= 10k USD / 30 years = about 333 USD / year
Batteries:
… Upfront costs:
= (800 W) (3 weeks) (140 USD / KWh nameplate) (1 / 80% limit max depth of discharge) (1 / 90% roundtrip efficiency)
= about 78k USD
… Yearly recurring costs:
= upfront costs / lifetime costs
= 78k USD / 10 years
= 7.8k USD per year.
Solar and batteries bombined:
… Upfront costs: about 88k USD
… Yearly recurring costs:about 8k USD per year
Compare that to worst case cost numbers from Hinkley C and Vogtle.
Nuclear:
… Upfront costs:
= (800 W) (11 USD / 1 watt nameplate) (1 / 85% capacity factor)
= about 10.4k USD
… Yearly recurring costs:
= upfront costs / lifetime costs + fuel costs + O&M costs + decommissioning costs
= upfront costs / lifetime costs + fuel costs + O&M costs + 15% upfront costs / lifetime
= 10.4k USD / 60 years + (4.9 USD / MWh) (800 W) + (13.7 USD / MWh) (800 W) + (15%) (10.4k USD) / 60 years
= about 173 USD / year + 34 USD / year + 96 USD / year + 26 USD / year
= about 329 USD / year
…
Scenario 2
No one really does scenario 1. Instead, they’ll accept much higher downtimes (unacceptable for most people), or connect to the grid (for the purposes of Marcus’s, that would be cheating), or use fossil fuel backup (unacceptable if we want to achieve our climate change goals).
However, while I’m here, I might as well create the strongest argument for you that I can think of, and also take that down. Let me also examine the common Green academic paper techniques of a cross continent transmission grid to reduce storage costs to something close to reasonable.
Again, I’m relying on this paper:
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2018/ee/c7ee03029khttps://kencaldeira.wordpress.com/2018/03/01/geophysical-constraints-on-the-reliability-of-solar-and-wind-power-in-the-united-states/To be reasonable, let’s say 2x overbuild and 24 hours of storage, plus transmission.
For transmission costs, I’m relying on this source:
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/renewable-us-grid-for-4-5-trillionCosts come out to about 10 USD per 1 watt on the grid.
For the sake of argument, let’s use better numbers for solar to represent utility scale solar. IIRC, it was around 0.7 USD / nameplate watt not too long ago.
Renewables
… Upfront cost:
= solar
+ batteries
+ transmission
= (800 W) (0.7 USD / nameplate watt) (1 / 20% capacity factor) (2x overbuild)
+ (800 W) (24 hours) (140 USD / KWh nameplate) (1 / 80% limit depth of discharge) (1 / 90% roundtrip efficiency)
+ (800 W) (10 USD / 1 watt)
= about 5.6k USD + 3.7k USD + 8k USD
= about 17.3k USD
… Yearly recurring costs:
= solar + batteries + transmission
= 5.6k USD / 30 years + 3.7k USD / 10 years + 8k USD / 60 years
= 690 USD / year
Again, compare to nuclear, using the same pessimistic numbers.
Nuclear
… Upfront costs: about 10.4k USD
… Yearly recurring costs: about 329 USD / year
Note that even under pessimistic assumptions for nuclear and optimistic assumptions for solar and batteries, nuclear has cheaper upfront costs and cheaper yearly recurring costs in steady-state.
Note that the nuclear numbers that I’m using are outliers. These nuclear costs are for first of a kind designs with inexperienced work crews, among other pessimistic assumptions. Under more realistic assumptions based on historical data, we should expect something like this:
Nuclear
… Upfront costs:
(800 W) (2.5 USD / watt nameplate) (1 / 90% capacity factor)
= approx 2.2k USD
… Yearly recurring costs:
= upfront costs / lifetime + fuel costs + O&M costs + decommissioning costs
= upfront costs / lifetime + fuel costs + O&M costs + 9% upfront costs / lifetime
= 2.2k USD / 80 years + (3.9 USD / MWh) (800 W) + (7.8 USD / MWh) (800 W) + (9%)(2.2k USD) / 80 years
= about 28 USD / year + 27 USD / year + 55 USD / year + 2 USD / year
= about 112 USD / year
The net result is that the solar batteries transmission plan has 8x higher upfront costs, and 6x higher yearly recurring costs.
Further note that the renewables costs presented here is significantly underestimating the real value because of the assumptions being made. We’re basing this off of a model that ignores transmission losses and storage roundtrip losses. We’re not dealing with transmission losses. We’re ignoring the costs for synchronous condensers for grid inertia, and the diesel generators and boilers for blackstart capability. It’s easily 10x more expensive in practice.
As an aside, this explains why places that tries to build more solar and wind sees increases electricity costs and decrease in grid stability. Most famously, this includes California and Germany.
PS: Obviously, available hydro capacity could be used in place of batteries, but given the limited availability of hydro worldwide compared to total power demand, this does not substantially change the conclusions.
PPS: Why do my results differ with almost every mainstream reporting of relative costs of solar/wind vs nuclear? It’s because almost every mainstream reporting of costs is based on the same LCOE methodology, which is fundamentally dishonest in a dozen different ways. I’d be happy to go over those with more detail if you wish.
I think perhaps it’s worth mentioning, as a data point, that here in Canada we’re on 2/3 power being renewable. According to https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles-canada.html , that’s 61% hydro (we have a lot of water), ~6% solar and wind. Plus 15% uranium, which I presume are those handful of CANDU reactors that have been chugging along for quite some time.
Notably, this varies by province. Here in BC, per the app at https://apps2.cer-rec.gc.ca/energy-future/ , power is 92% hydro/tidal. The general picture seems to be “We favor hydro, hydro’s awesome – but yes, try everything.”
Also, all the arguments regarding ‘methane/carbon dioxide from dams/plants’ are irrelevant, possibly nonsensical.
The problem isn’t that carbon EXISTS in the atmosphere, that the natural carbon cycles exist. It’s that we hauled a great whackload of carbon out of the ground where it had been OUT of that cycle, and dumped it in. Methane emitted by plants in a dam was already in the cycle, it’s plants.
But we have no way to shovel the way-too-much carbon out of the air.
cr:
I don’t think I’m cherrypicking when I cite Germany because citing the best example against my argument is not cherrypicking. Germany is the best example against my argument because they’ve made the most progress for solar and wind and spent the most money to do so. Do you have any better examples? I don’t think so. Hence my point. Nuclear is proven technology that can be built quickly, relatively cheaply, and safely. Solar and wind as the primary replacements for fossil fuels are unproven and preliminary evidence indicates that it’s going to be very hard, and deeper analysis indicates that’s basically impossible for solar and wind to replace 100% of fossil fuels in a region (assuming no connections to other countries and their non-solar wind reliable power).
South Australia? 1 hour at noon? Please. That’s the easy part. Up to this point, most of the intermittency can be handled by ramping down coal power plants. After this point, you have excess solar electricity and nothing to do with it. That’s where it gets hard. That’s where you start needing lots of extra transmission and lots of storage, both of which are extremely expensive. Again, that is no accomplishment of note. I care about 100% decarbonization, not the 30% (yearly average) or whatever that they have achieved. And yes, I am taking into account that AFAIK they rely heavily on their neighbors reliable coal generation to keep the lights on.
Re solar and wind competing with nuclear. See my post above for a breakdown of how that’s bullshit.
Re other storage technologies. Every year there’s a new battery startup announcement claiming to have solved the problem. They’ve all been vaporware. Call me jaded, but until I see that commercial prototype and a release of the materials (to see if there will be shortages of materials), I’m going to default to assuming that it’s just another scam to steal money from ignorant investors and government subsidies.
Almost all of the grid storage in the world is pumped hydro, with almost all of the remaining fraction being batteries. All of those other technologies – if they’re so awesome, why aren’t they being used? This is a classic gish gallop. I can break down each option, one at a time, but that takes way more research to do and way more text to do compared to you just throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks.
Also
Marcus, I think it matters if half of the solar panels in the world are made with slave labor or not. Sometimes we don’t have real choices whether to buy products made with unfair labor practices, but in this case we do. It matters that nuclear power plants are not made with slave labor and half of all solar cells are. We have a choice. We can choose to not buy slave labor products. We can choose to accept the higher cost alternative, e.g. solar cells that are not made with slave labor.
I brought it up to point out that we should be banning solar cells from China, and that would have a significant impact on the prices that you are quoting for solar cells.
No. Some hydro reservoirs significantly change the biological decay path for plants. Plants take CO2 out of the air, die, and get into the reservoir, where that carbon is released at CH4, methane. If that reservoir was not there, the carbon atoms would have been released as CO2. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 for the same amount of carbon atoms. It’s not just the amount of carbon atoms in the air that matters, but also the chemical configuration of those carbon atoms that matters.
Another factor for tropical locations is they absorb carbon year round, so flooding a valley and all it’s living trees leading to increased methane needs to factored in to calculate any net decreases in carbon.
abbeycadabra:
You really just had to read the very next sentence from the link:
No dam, no flooded area the size of the reservoir, no anaerobic environment → no extra methane.
Now I may as well quote the rest of that short section below:
Moral of the story: We can do things about it. That’s better than (like Gerrard with nuclear) scoffing at such problems or denying they even exist, because you think this is supposed to be like rooting for your favorite sports team.
I feel like I have to chime in on the bit about hydropower damns and methane.
yeah, it’s because you’ve got more anaerobic decomposition of organic matter, which tends to produce CH4, whereas that matter decaying normally would typically result in mostly CO2. I’m a bit rusty on this, but I think CH4 is roughly 40x worse than CO2 as far as global warming is concerned – it’s much more harmful, but also shorter lived…
Also, that’s gonna be a one-time blip. Damned areas aren’t going to be a limitless source of methane.
And, I’m of mixed feelings on hydro power. The initial examples in this post (fjord hyrdropower…) seem like a pretty ideal scenario. lots of vertical drop, maybe not a lot of sediment? (I have no clue), but also, probably not terribly likely some salmon or other critters swimming up hundreds of vertical feet for there to be wildlife issues.
On the other hand, I’ve heard of a lot of hydropower reservoirs filling with sediment very quickly, and combined with that initial methane blip from submerging a bunch of organic matter, and all the carbon involved in the cement production… Not all hydropower damns should be considered renewable.
But, if it comes down to a choice twixt salmon (and a bunch other species) going extinct, or the whole world getting significantly hotter, and then extincting a significant percentage of any and all existing species…
I’d reluctantly throw the salmon under the bus (trolley?)
Although, at this rate, I feel like we are throwing every and anything under the bus (trolley?), but somehow forgot we cuffed them all to each other and to ourself, because we were worried they would run away and… (I don’t know, what do conservatives worry about late at night, gay marriage? shrooms? a burger flipper being able afford rent?) -and, we are going to get pulled under the bus/trolley with them.
Arguing about climate change mitigation strategies at this point is like arguing about which comic book character would win a fight, it doesn’t matter because it’s not going to happen. The rich people decided their billionaire dick-measuring contest was more important than their grand children’s and/or great-grand children’s ability to have a decent life, or even a life at all.
Look at how we are failing to handle COVID. this should have been over and done with, maybe a couple months at most, of government intervention, lowered productivity, and somewhat reduced personal “freedoms”, but here we are, nearly two years into this mess, and a significant chunk of the population not only doesn’t believe it’s a credible threat, but somehow believes that taking precautions (like getting vaccinated or wearing a mask, or social distancing, or even washing your fucking hands) is somehow a risk in of itself. And there is real-time information and stats on who and how many COVID is killing, it’s happening right now, right in front of us. Global warming is going to kill grandkids, many of which don’t even exist yet. If we can’t get people to recognize a threat that is actually killing them right damned now, how in the fuck can we expect them to recognize a threat two generations removed?
And, back to topic, if we are going full-on speculation about what some proposed nuclear tech can do, why not take this into consideration:
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2021/09/fossil-fuels-are-dead.html
I’m not saying I agree with that, but I have a lot of respect for that author, and feel it’s an interesting concept…
Once again, Gerrard flushes his credibility down the toilet with the greatest of ease…
Nuclear is proven technology that can be built quickly, relatively cheaply, and safely.
Utterly false: it’s not at all “quick,” it’s not “cheap” even when we disregard safety altogether, and some nuclear power designs are a lot safer than others — safety is not guaranteed, it has to be consciously built in at all levels and stages.
Solar and wind as the primary replacements for fossil fuels are unproven and preliminary evidence indicates that it’s going to be very hard, and deeper analysis indicates that’s basically impossible for solar and wind to replace 100% of fossil fuels in a region…
“Unproven?” Are you kidding me?! Both of those have been proven for DECADES, and they’re being proven again and again in local initiatives all over the world. This is just an obvious FACT, and denying it as flatly as you do only brings disgrace to yourself and whatever cause you’re trying to sell.
And no, wind and solar don’t have to “replace fossil fuels 100%” to be worth doing. Whatever replacement they manage to do, is a significant dent in greenhouse gases, and therefore worthwhile.
Also, I notice you didn’t address Ranum’s point about the Soviets’ all-out response to the Chernobyl disaster. Why would such a callous regime go all out like they did, if there was really nothing to worry about?
All in all, Gerrard, you’ve basically shown yourself to be WAAAY too emotionally invested in nuclear power (or your fantasy thereof) to be credible. And I strongly suspect your ravings are, in fact, just another prong of Retrumplitarians’ long-running all-out attack on the environmental movement.
I’ve never been banned from anywhere on FreeThoughtBlogs […]
I would like to point out that that’s a fairly common mistake, and I’ve seen trolls around here confused by it. It should really be FreethoughtBlogs, not FreeThoughtBlogs. Just look at the bottom of any page. While freethought is also sometimes spelled “free thought”, I’m sure most of those who spell it as two words don’t mean the epistemological viewpoint that beliefs should not be based on authority, tradition, revelation, or dogma, but reached by methods such as logic, reason, and empirical observation. They probably imagine it’s some variation of freeze peach, and they get all pearl-clutchy and “hypocrite!!!1!” when they learn it isn’t.
@87. GerrardOfTitanServer : I’m flattered but I suspect consciousness razor is insulted by your confusion of our respective posts here.. I do have have a nym & RL identity y’know. I try to be fair to you. Reciprocity would be .. nice?
Your point missing is noted.
Way back at 45, in regards to the issue of spent nuclear fuel waste.
Where is this easy and cheap disposal? Prairie Island currently has 42 casks of waste, but Yucca Mountain did not happen and they still don’t have a disposal plan for either nuclear plant. The public utility is currently paying 2.5 million in restitution to the Prairie Island Dakota for those environmental and health problems that Gerard claims are mostly harmless and semi-mythical.
And in other news, far right French presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen has promised, if elected, to tear down all wind turbines and replace them with more nukes. What a charming bed fellow for our dear friend Gerrard.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/frances-le-pen-says-she-will-take-down-wind-turbines-if-she-is-elected-2021-10-14/
Stevor
Sorry.
cvoinescu
Noted.
Raging Bee
There is not a single country powered primarily by solar and wind. There is a country powered primarily by nuclear, France, and one more powered by a combination of nuclear and hydro, Sweden, and several more powered primarily by hydro. There are several regions and countries that have tried to eliminate fossil fuels by relying on solar and wind, and some, like Germany, have spent significant amounts of time and money on solar and wind, comparable amounts to what France spent to succeed with nuclear, without anywhere near the level of success. Surely we can conclude that nuclear is a proven technology to replace fossil fuels, and solar and wind are not. I gave the many reasons why in posts above.
Tethys
Because anti-nuclear opposition is misinformed. The goal of the anti-nuclear lobby is to use this issue of nuclear waste as a means to achieve their end of energy poverty. They don’t want a solution to the so-called nuclear waste issue. Here’s two or three different approaches to waste disposal, and all of them are easy and cheap.
http://thorconpower.com/docs/ct_yankee.pdfhttps://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1996/10/the-sub-seabed-solution/308434/https://jmkorhonen.net/2013/08/15/graph-of-the-week-what-happens-if-nuclear-waste-repository-leaks/As for the claim that anything related to the Prairie Island Dakota nuclear power plant has ever hurt anyone, I am unaware of such issues, and I could not find anything from a few minutes spent googling. Could you give me more to work on please? Note that I’m very sure that there is no such injury to anyone – ditto for the purported claim of damage to the environment – but I’ll be more than happy to read whatever you present on this issue.
There is not a single country powered primarily by solar and wind.
So what? That doesn’t mean solar and wind aren’t useful alternatives worth some investment.
Also, JUST ONE country “powered primarily” by nuclear power does not mean nuclear power is the only alternative for everyone everywhere — or even for France for that matter.
The goal of the anti-nuclear lobby is to use this issue of nuclear waste as a means to achieve their end of energy poverty.
Demonizing your enemy: instant credibility fail (though not your first). Dismissed.
Also, I still don’t see any response to Ranum’s point about the Soviets’ massive cleanup efforts after Chernobyl. You’re way beyond “strike three yer out!”
https://books.google.com/books?id=LCCjDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA210&lpg=PA210&dq=prairie+island+2.5+million&source=bl&ots=JzY6PNljRc&sig=ACfU3U2Lz3WoY5l9E0fBD355OcLYcIQ2Sw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiniNu6_t7zAhWGgGoFHTh3D8QQ6AF6BAgREAI#v=onepage&q=prairie%20island%202.5%20million&f=false
Sorry for the naked link!
I forgot that this particular tribe of Dakota call themselves Sioux.
As part of the 2003 law passed that allows the utility to continue to store and create nuclear waste yards from their homes. It was cheaper than being sued. They have a casino and lawyers now, unlike when the plant was built.
We have a moratorium on building any new nuclear facilities in MN unless a real system is developed to deal with the waste we already have sitting in the floodplain.
Tethys.
Sorry. In your link, at the page that it brought me to, I don’t see any mention of anyone being harmed or any damage to the environment. I was unable to find any other link myself making such claims. Again, are you aware of any?
You would have to read the environmental assessment which came up in search for me for the higher rates of miscarriage and various cancers documented in their community.
Those are older documents, as the battle to find a waste disposal solution has been ongoing for decades. On site storage of the waste was never part of the agreement that allowed the nuclear plant to be constructed, but disposal of the waste was guaranteed by the federal government. Yucca mountain.
So, I am aware that there are ways to dispose of the waste, but that facility does not exist due to the outsize impacts that were to be borne by yet another tribe of natives and their reservation.
So, I have been doing a bit of research, curious about the availability of small/regional nuclear power systems, also known as SMRs (Small Modular Reactors). Anyone who can point me at something more substantial than I managed to find, I’d appreciate it.I’ve dug through a couple of sources but this one seems, to me, to be pretty good:
[https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/small-nuclear-power-reactors.aspx]
I was particularly interested in the sections about various nationality support for SMRs and the progress of various systems through development.
A few things come to mind, first being that “thorium reactors” are not thorium reactors any more than an old school 1970s reactor is a “graphite reactor” or a “zirconium reactor” – that’s unfortunately bullshit; the thing that makes it all work is some kind of uranium isotope or, in the case of the CIA’s RTG it’s plutonium. My opinion is thus that calling it a “thorium reactor” is good marketing, which is also to say that it’s smooth-tasting bullshit. I don’t care, but I don’t like marketing because it tells me that the person is willing to lie to me, which immediately gets my hackles up. There are other and much more important issues, namely that water-cycle reactors share a problem with the water potentially breaking into hydrogen and causing explosions, that other materials don’t have. This is basic reactor 101 stuff that I remember from way back, but the literature I reviewed didn’t show me that there have been dramatic strides made in terms of making reactors that don’t have a problem that there’s very hot radioactive stuff inside that you want to stay on the inside not the outside.
Also, I commented above that I don’t see any of these things as being particularly light or portable. I’m going to stand by that; it’s nice to have what amounts to a portable reactor core, but most of these systems are not RTGs small enough and light enough to put in a spacecraft or lose in the Himalayas. The ones that are designed to power a small town are going to need big concrete bases, a lot of plumbing, grid hookups and transformers, etc. That means that it’s going to take months or years to install one, setting aside permitting, safety inspection, power redundancy, etc. There are a lot of different issues in the different designs but naturally they all share a concern with cooling; it seems as though backup generators for coolant pumps, and switching systems will all be part of the “footprint” since they lack deep-space cooling like the RTGs on a space probe. None of that bothers me in principle; it’s just engineering and humans are absolutely the best at that.
So, the not-unexpected: there is a lot of work ongoing for producing SMRs, in every major tech nation. In other words, I’m not the only person advocating “let’s try everything and see what works!” There are different designs, different business models, and different levels of government or civil agency support and involvement (in the US you need the big nuclear labs onboard or you’re not going to get anywhere, it seems) That makes sense – the fuel supply is tightly regulated by every nuclear power, because it is a potential weapon. [not so much because it can be enriched into a bomb, but radiological dispersion weapons might be a problem] anyhow, I was happy to see that a lot of people are busy trying to make SMRs available.
Also a bit of a surprise: there are 5 SMRs currently operating: 1 Pakistan/China, 1 India, 1 Siberia, 3 Russia. It appears that one is an experimental conversion of all the support systems of a coal-fired plant to a nuclear generator, which seems to be a super neat idea if it can be made to work long-term. There are 2 Chinese, 1 Argentine, and 1 Russian experimental SMRs currently under construction. There are 17 “near term/advanced development” systems including Canadian, US, Chinese, Russian, etc.
So, that’s an interesting point: it seems that there is a great deal of money being spent and research being done on SMRs, in all of the high tech nations that currently have nuclear weapons and therefore fuel supplies, etc. But it raises a question in my mind, which is: what is GerrardOfTitanServer droning on about? – he’s getting what he/we want: lots of research, some prototypes fielded, etc. Most of the people participating in this thread appear to be taking the same view that I do, namely, “try everything and let’s see what works!” and so do the apparently thousands(?) of people world-wide who are working on building these things. Why is GerrardOfTitanServer popping up all over freethoughtblogs and comment-jacking into discussions insisting that something that is apparently happening, needs to happen? It seems that the people out in the real world who are trying to build SMRs are “on the job” and it appears there is a lot of research money behind them, too. What is GerrardOfTitanServer’s point, then? Do they simply wish to whinge about mythical “greens” or trash perfectly reasonable attempts to do other forms of renewable energy?
GerrardOfTitanServer, I think you are confusing “being impassioned” (which many of us are) with “being a pain in the ass.” Most of us appear to agree with you, except we’re not as far out on a limb as you are. Why don’t you pull it in a bit, or find someplace else to browbeat people, like some climate denialist message board or wherever those mythical “greens” you hate so much hang out?
A few other notes: unless the information I managed to find is out of date, then it is not, in fact, possible to readily obtain SMRs. In other words, the entire cost/benefit analysis that GerrardOfTitanServer is making, regarding why solar or wind aren’t cost-effective is completely beside the point because, as I suspected, they are comparing hypothetical systems against actual systems; systems which, may I add, have already had their cost-overruns and schedule delays amortized into them. A home solar system that you can buy for $20,000 is available right now more or less and it appears that the production SMRs are at least 10 years into the future. That’s not even an honest comparison, GerrardOfTitanServer, that’s comparing apples to unicorns. I find it distasteful in the extreme that GerrardOfTitanServer keeps accusing others of being intellectually dishonest, when they’re getting up on some kind of high horse about how people ought to be – I don’t know – doing something that they’re already doing, and how much they suck for not doing that and only that.
I repeatedly asked GerrardOfTitanServer if these systems he was talking about were available and instead they chose to dodge that question. I asked why, if a little radioactive leakage isn’t so bad, the Soviets went to so much trouble to clean up Chernobyl and I got what I can only describe as “aggressive bullshit” coming back at me. I pointed out (contra what GerrardOfTitanServer said) that commodity home solar systems exist, and pay for themselves in ~12-15 years, and GerrardOfTitanServer pretended not to hear me and presented a cherry-picked comparison of large-scale solar installations (not what I was talking about) versus his imaginary SMRs. I pointed out that Norway and other countries (supported by similar facts from the commentariat(tm)) have power grids that run quite nicely on 100% renewables, and GerrardOfTitanServer came back with some stretchy stuff about how hydro causes plants to rot and therefore, it’s somehow worse than nuclear SMRs that don’t actually exist yet. Last but far from least, I repeatedly (as did others in the commentariat(tm)) pointed out that we are not your “greens” and your labeling us as the hated “greens” doesn’t work on us – GerrardOfTitanServer steadfastly refused to come to grips with the apparent fact that they are apparently trying to browbeat a bunch of people who don’t actually disagree with them.
In fact the only thing I really disagree with GerrardOfTitanServer about is that they’re a gigantic pain in the blog, and I’d like them to fuck off now or go away and upgrade their way of thinking and come back later when they’re prepared to be more congenial.
But it raises a question in my mind, which is: what is GerrardOfTitanServer droning on about? – he’s getting what he/we want: lots of research, some prototypes fielded, etc. Most of the people participating in this thread appear to be taking the same view that I do, namely, “try everything and let’s see what works!” and so do the apparently thousands(?) of people world-wide who are working on building these things. Why is GerrardOfTitanServer popping up all over freethoughtblogs and comment-jacking into discussions insisting that something that is apparently happening, needs to happen?
Let’s look at what else is happening right now: global warming and other environmental issues are all over the mainstream news; the Republicans’ absolute, consistent disastrous dead-wrongness on these issues is becoming apparent to more people; polls are indicating solid majority consensus that protection of the environment should be a high priority; so all of this could add up to a big LOSING issue for Republicans. So what is their best response? Demonize the environmental movement. And that’s what Gerrard is doing — it’s not about nuclear power or energy policy in general, it’s about trashing and undermining enemies of the Retrumplitarians, by any means available. (This is also why he’s attacking everyone who supports nuclear power as part of a larger strategy: we’re part of that coalition the Retrumplitarians see as a threat to their dominance.)
And before you call me paranoid or say what a huge stretch this is, let me remind you that this is the party who deny the existence of man-made global warming, deny that smoking causes cancer, call people who question and fight racism “the real racists,” accuse feminists of hating women, accuse everyone who questions police misconduct of wanting to kill cops, rebrand discrimination and harassment as “religious freedom”…believe me, accusing environmentalists of wanting to make everyone poor is not at all out-of-character for that lot. In fact, libertarians have been doing it since BEFORE the anti-nuclear movement really started. And so were the LaRouchies, a long-suspected COINTELPRO front, who were also championing nuclear power with an irrational fervor comparable to Gerrard’s zealotry today. Gerrard is not here to make any sort of good-faith argument for anything; he’s nothing more or less than part of the next wave of divisive COINTELPRO tools.
PS: If there’s still any doubt about my thesis, Gerrard’s insane hostility to “greens” — including all-but-explicit calls for violent revenge against them — is EXACTLY in line with the Retrumplitarians’ undisguised hatred of all forms of environmental activism or regulation.
Marcus
Do you want me to write a book? Because otherwise I have to pick and choose what to respond to. Ok. I’ll try to respond to everthing.
…
Re “thorium reactors”.
Thorium reactors are really thorium reactors in the sense that the input fuel to the reactor complex is thorium, not uranium. Thorium is transmuted in the reactor to uranium, which is then fissioned.
On the flip side, I agree that there’s a lot of ridiculous hype around thorium reactors, such as where someone above makes the mistake / skip of the tongue wrongly saying that thorium reactors are not fission reactors. They’re still uranium fission reactors in the sense that it’s uranium being fissioned in the core, not thorium.
Having said all of that, much of the hype around “thorium reactors” really applies to “molten salt reactors”, which are something very different. There’s still sometimes a lot of excessive hype around molten salt reactors, but it’s also something very different.
…
Re safety
You still say that modern reactors need backup water pumps. This is false. Again, please read what I read above about passive decay heat removal systems on the AP-1000. Also, if you want radical advances in safety, check out next-gen molten salt reactor designs, and in particular ThorCon. ThorCon has zero safety critical mechanical moving parts. No valves. No pumps. No nothing. No mechanical moving parts are necessary for safe shutdown. And it’s completely walk-away safe without any power requirements to operate any safety systems. Moveover, it’s completely safe against operator error. It’s even safe against many kinds of malicious operator actions as well.
…
Re small modular reactors.
The best small modular reactor which is close to commercialization that I know of is probably NuScsale.
However, I don’t think you need a small modular reactor to meet most of your requirements. The requirements seems to be to be able to quickly install a nuclear reactor in a third world country with limited infrastructure and expertise. In that regard, the best reactor for that criteria is probably ThorConIsle. It is very large, but installation could be very quick because it’s just a nuclear reactor on a boat which you tow into place. No need to install water pipes or anything else. The boat even comes with the steam generator and turbine and the electrical switchyard equipment to put power directly onto most grids.
…
Re feasibility of rooftop solar.
In that post, the first comparison was rooftop solar, not utility scale solar. Please read it again. The conclusion was that the batteries were way too expensive without a grid connection.
I also compared it to the worst case large conventional centralized nuclear power plant, naming Hinkley C and Vogtle by name. I didn’t mention SMRs at all.
Here, you seem to be moving the goalposts, talking about how solar installations pay for themselves in the current market structure. That’s a very, very different claim from your original claim that it was only 10k USD to go off-grid. Basically, net-metering is bullshit. It’s bullshit for so many reasons. You don’t pay for the transmission, or capacity payments to ensure grid stability, or the grid inertia to ensure grid stability, or the blackstart capability to start the grid again. On top of that, unless you’re properly paying wholesale hourly prices, then the electricity that you sell to the grid is way less valuable than the electricity that you buy back because when solar works for you, it works for everyone, depressing the value of that electricity; in some places, the excess of solar electricity depresses the value until it’s negative.
It is feasible to install rooftop solar and be net positive on money. However, this is in no way a proper argument that such a plan would be feasible for the country. Rooftop solar owners are leaches on the system, enabled by a corrupt regulatory and market structure; everyone else pays for their electricity and mostly useless rooftop solar.
…
That is not a remotely-honest or accurate summary of what I wrote on this point. And I quote:
Note: I’m generally in favor of hydro. Also note: depending on circumstances, some hydro dams emit the greenhouse gas equivalent of a coal power plant. No really. It’s true. And you thought hydro was always low-greenhouse gas. Thankfully, it appears that most don’t.
Also, I have not been pushing SMRs, like, at all. I don’t get why you think I am. I think you’re confusing me for someone else. In particular, the reactor design that I’ve been singing its praises is ThorConIsle, which is 500 MWe, which is far from “small”. It is, however, a modular reactor in the sense that it’s built in a factor and shipped to location.
None of this excuses your continued fallacious reasoning where you defended the feasibility of solar and wind by citing hydro. None of excuses your continued strawmanning of my position as attacking all renewables; I have been very clear in favoring hydro.
…
Re soil removal.
First, let’s answer the question directly. What are the radiation levels in 2009 in Pripyat without soil removal?
http://www.chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/radiation-levels/That’s about 1.6 – 2.5 mSv / year. That’s completely harmless. As the article suggests, I wouldn’t lick anything there without more information, but the mere exposure from walking around at that level of radiation is completely harmless. If they were ok with evacuations of the area for a few decades, then no soil removal would have been necessary.
Related: In another thread, Marcus mentioned some more readings taken by himself, presumably many years after the accident.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2021/08/10/well-all-be-on-fire-soon-enough/The first is less than 14 mSv / year, which is almost certainly harmless. The second is 34 mSv / year, which is also almost certainly harmless. Any chronic dose of less than 100 mSv / year is almost certainly harmless.
Also, take a look at this map:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/guides/456900/456957/html/nn3page1.stmIt looks like Pripyat was among the worst hit areas.
I don’t have access to all of the necessary data to make a firm conclusion, but based on what I see here, Marcus was simply wrong that soil removal was necessary to safely visit there, and I would go further that soil removal was mostly unnecessary if one was willing to accept an evacuation for a decade or three.
So, why did the Soviets do something unnecessary? Maybe they overreacted to the limited information available. Maybe they intended for people to resume habitation before a decade or three. I don’t know. I can’t speculate to the minds of those people, but I can comment on the facts as I see them now. You were wrong.
…
PS: Let me read this all again, and see if I missed any points.
365 * 24 = 8760 hr/a
120 μSv/hr * 8760 hr/a = 1,051,200 μSv/a = 1.05 Sv/a
300 μSv/hr * 8760 hr/a = 2,628,000 μSv/a = 2.63 Sv/a
Where the fuck did those ‘less than 100 mSv/a’ measurements come from?
Not to mention that, per http://nuclearsafety.gc.ca/eng/resources/radiation/introduction-to-radiation/radiation-doses.cfm:
… which would be the Canadian government’s opinion on ‘harmless’ doses of radiation. Note that for a random citizen they are 1/14 and 1/34 the doses Gerrard described, and apparently ~1/1000 and ~1/2600 the doses Marcus’s measurements suggested.
Until now I thought he was just overly – WAY overly – gung-ho. I now believe Gerrard is, despite all the inexplicaby-pink-yet-somehow-unclickable links, completely full of shit.
… seriously, WHY does Gerrard go out of his way to carefully make his links fancy colors and unclickable? It’s just one more pointless bit of obnoxiousness.
Raging Bee
I’m just saying what many leading climate scientists are saying. So, dismissing me is also dismissing a lot of climate scientists. That’s not a move you should make.
Could you look up the word “hyperbole” in a dictionary please? And I’m the one arguing that we should protect people and protect the environment. The thing is, the biggest enemy to the environment and the people is Green ideology.
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consciousness razor
Suppose you get 42% solar and wind. The necessary amount of nuclear reactors to produce 58% would be almost the same amount as producing 100%. That’s my problem. It’s also mostly true for 21% solar wind. In most cases, adding solar and wind to a working nuclear+hydro solution doesn’t reduce the necessary amount of nuclear and hydro. Ergo, the solar cells and wind turbines are useless. (Again, some exceptions exist, specifically certain countries with an unusual abundance of hydro.)
Moveover, they’re worse than useless, because someone has to pay for the extra solar and wind, and extra transmission. At 42% levels, someone probably needs to start paying for other things too, like extra infrastructure for extra capacity payments, grid inertia, frequency control services, and maybe even blackstart capability. They’re a drain on the system. Again, there’s a reason why electricity prices go up in places that build lots of solar and wind.
…
Marcus
This never made any sense to me. This seems to be devoid of good engineering principles. Should we also employ hamsters in wheels for electricity production? You think I jest, but this ought to raise a very serious concern with your line of thinking. In proper engineering, we never throw every possible solution at the problem. Instead, the typical case is a very small number of technological approaches are used in 99% of cases to solve the problem. For example, we don’t have a dozen different kinds of car engines on the road. We used to have exactly one (or two if you want to count trucks and want to say diesel is sufficiently different – but it’s all just internal combustion engine). Now, we have two, internal combustion engine and electric engines. We don’t use horse-drawn carriages anymore. I think that throwing solar and wind at the problem is like saying some significant portion of cars on the road should be horse-drawn carriages.
I really must still disagree. It is still a zero-sum game. Again, I hate to keep using the same example, but if Germany had spent its money on nuclear instead of solar and wind, then it would have enough money to go 100% nuclear electricity even at Hinkley C and Vogtle prices. But it didn’t. Germany could have spent additional money, making its electricity prices even higher than what they are already which is extrmeely high, but they didn’t.
There’s also the political problem here. Raising electricity prices, or taxes, whatever, even more is not politically acceptable. The government would get voted out. One can make a good argument that this is exactly what happened in Australia, where they used to have a carbon tax, and then the government got voted out and the carbon tax was repealed. The idea of building two parallel energy infrastrcutures is politically impossible.
“Two parallel systems? Surely solar and wind would reduce the amount of nuclear reactors that we need!” As I mentioned above to consciousness razor, another reason to avoid throwing everything at the problem is that solar and wind are just wastes of money. To the first degree of approximation, they’re worthless: They will not reduce the necessary number of hydro and nuclear installations in most places, and they won’t save any fuel or operating costs either. So, we can either build X number of hydro and nuclear installations, or we can build the same number of hydro and nuclear installations plus additional worthless solar and wind.
As I showed above, the price of those solar panels is about the same as their fair share of pessimistic costs for nuclear power plant, e.g. Vogtle or Hinkly C, and it’s about 4x more than reasonable nuclear power plant prices according to historical prices in South Korea and France.
Moreover, the other point that I’m trying to show is that those solar panels are mostly / largely worthless to the Puerto Rican family. Except for a few hours every day, they don’t get electricity. That means no food refrigeration. No lights at night. Etc. If you are about to say “throw on some batteries”, then look above at where I cost that – it’s not pretty.
He’s a leach on the system. I fail to see how this is relevant at all to the discussion at hand, which is government policy. Some number of people can leach on a system without killing it, but if everyone tried to leach on the system in the same way, it would collapse. It would collapse well before that too, somewhere around 30%.
The problem is that I’m having a conversation about stopping climate change, and you’re apparently having a conversation about whether certain rich individuals can game the system which exploits the poor working class who can’t afford the initial solar panel investment.
Again, not true. See other posts by me and other commenters else-thread. Certain kinds of reservoirs lead to more anerobic decomposition, which releases methane instead of CO2. This is a significant effect at some hydro power plants, enough so that they produce more greenhouse gas emissions than a similar sized coal power plant. And again, I’m still a huge fan of hydro – just don’t build them in places where this is a significant effect.
Pumped hydro represents something like 99% of all grid storage. Batteries are part of the 1% remainder. Pumped hydro has something like a 85-90% round trip efficiency. It’s quite good. There’s not enough land area for this to be a large portion of the storage requirements of a majority solar wind grid. See:
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/I also feel like you’re doing a gish gallop now, throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. It seems like you have an ideological commitment to the idea there is no silver bullet, even though in engineering it is often the case that there are silver bullets, e.g. radical technological breakthroughs that radically transform a sector of industry, and sometimes even radically transform the larger world.
Sure, if they wanted lights during the 6 hours of bright daylight. Again, you’re neglecting the problems of intermittency and storage. Intermittency and storage are the major problems of solar. They’re so significant that solar cells could be free, and solar cells would still be mostly worthless.
I do no such thing. As I showed above, rooftop solar costs, using average daily power output only, costs about the same as their share of a modern overly expensive power plant like Hinkley C or Vogtle. I picked the worst possible numbers for nuclear, and the best possible numbers for rooftop solar.
Nothing about this is bad at all. AFAIK, their dams cause very little excess methane. I know that there’s some local ecological impact, but I still believe that overall dams are great.
It’s also kind of a non-sequitir to the conversation that I’m having. The land capacity where you could build hydro dams worldwide is limited. Today, worldwide hydro output is about 500 GW. It’s unlikely that you could double that – all of the good spots are already taken. Worldwide power demand today is about 20,000 GW, and it’ll be 30,000 GW by 2030. Thus, hydro is a rounding error when talking about worldwide power generation. Again, hydro is great, and let’s keep them, and build more where we can, but it’s not going to significantly alter the final shape of the solution.
An example that has even smaller scaling capacity.
What’s wrong with this is that it’s being used as a kind of dodge to avoid my conclusion that something like 80% or 90% of the world’s energy generation needs to be nuclear. It is not “all of the above”. It’s “almost entirely nuclear, with a few exceptions that work in certain cases”.
For nuclear power, fuel costs are small portion of the overall costs. This is why nuclear is different from natural gas. Most of the cost is the upfront capital costs and the non-fuel O&M costs. There’s no space in the physics that allows for nuclear to be much cheaper at 50% output compared to 100% output. In other words, most of the cost of nuclear is just building the damn thing and operating it – fuel costs are small.
I’m not assuming that solar and wind need to fit into the grid as we have it. Out of every imaginable solution without any regard for what we have now, I keep coming back to only one feasible solution, something like 95% nuclear + 2% hydro + 3% other. Solar and wind simply have practically zero value in any imaginable solution.
It depends on what you mean. Yes we should continue R&D in all areas. However, existing nuclear is more than good enough, and we don’t need to wait on next-gen nuclear to solve our problems. We should still continue R&D, but we should start building the solution now with technology that we have now.
My gut reaction is: No it’s not. I don’t have any sources offhand, and maybe I’ll try to find some more later, but based on the natural nuclear reactor in Oklo, Gabon, it’s plausible / likely that the amount of movement of the radioactive atoms / particles would be basically zero.
You’re missing one of the key differences AFAIK. An inland resvoir that is fed by a river will accumulate much more plant material compared to coastlines which slowly flood from rising seawaters.
The root problem is that the governments are hamstrung by certain vocal subsets of the populations which prevent the government from using a technology to solve the problem.
ThorCon doesn’t exist, but the AP-1000 definitely does, and the AP-1000 has passive decay heat removal. So, yea, not sure why you’re focusing on the other one and ignoring the one that does exist.
Every nuclear reactor running in the West and Japan including Fukushima, I would classify those are “super duper clean nukes”.
I want us to stop wasting money on solar and wind deployment, and spend that money instead on conventional gen 3+ pressurized water reactors, and to start building those conventional gen 3+ pressurized water reactors like candy. Estimates indicate we need to build something like 1 large (1 GWe) nuclear reactor every 3 days for many decades if we’re serious about climate change, and I’m serious about climate change.
I already know what works, and that is conventional gen 3+ pressurized water reactors. I’m very hopeful that with proper investment and R&D, several next-gen reactors will become commercially available in 10 years, but the climate is not going to wait for us, and that’s why we should start the nuclear rennaisance with what we have now, and not with what we wish we had. If and when those next-gen designs have successful commercial prototypes, then we can start building those too / or in place of conventional pressurized gen 3+ reactors.
Which is useless if you want to avoid freezing to death in winter for anyone in a cold climate. Unless you’re going to leach off the grid, which again brings me back to my point that the individual house rooftop solar + battery system doesn’t allow the grid operators to save on any costs except sometimes for fuel costs (which doesn’t apply to nuclear power), and worse, if enough people do the home solar battery system, then they start imposing negative vlaue on the grid operator including the need for additional capacity payments, grid inertia, frequency control services, and eventually blackstart capability. They’ll also need to upgrade the grid transformers to support full bi-directional power flow and maybe even build more transmission. None of those things are cheap.
Re speed:
Throughout your posts, you’re implying that solar and wind are quicker to build compared to nuclear. Again, France vs Germany. Germany has spent comparable time and money on renewables (mostly solar and wind) as France did during their nuclear buildout, and Germany is nowhere close to decarbonization of electricity. France only needed 15 years to convert most of their grid to nuclear, and there is no technical reason why it couldn’t have been 100% of their grid. Here’s the brute reality that you’re facing and ignoring. Solar and wind can reduce fossil fuel usage by approx 30% before you hit the metaphorical brick wall of intermittency. Our goal needs to be 100% reductions, not 30% reductions.
look at them goalposts go…
@114 Lochaber
If only we could attach a generator to them, we’d solve the whole electricity problem right there.
…the biggest enemy to the environment and the people is Green ideology.
Damn, I thought it was gender ideology! Or maybe woke ideology?
Yep, definitely a Retrumplitarian stooge.
GerrardOfTitanServer:
Do you want me to write a book?
Don’t you mean “another book”?
One of the problems with posting exhausting text-walls is that when you conspicuously omit parts of your correspondent’s posting, it looks suspiciously deliberate. I assume you know that, though.
Having said all of that, much of the hype around “thorium reactors” really applies to “molten salt reactors”, which are something very different. There’s still sometimes a lot of excessive hype around molten salt reactors, but it’s also something very different.
Since it’s all theory and prototypes, these reactors are non-existent, so it’s all hype. You’re talking about magical mojo stuff that’s at least a decade or 2 out, you may as well be talking about fusion.
If I want to assume you’re sincere (which I am beginning to doubt) I can tell myself that you’ve bought the hype and are just here to blow smoke, but that doesn’t make sense. You talk about this stuff as if it exists, when – as I implied before – you’re talking about a bunch of powerpoints. It’s all hype. And you accuse people of not knowing what they’re talking about when what you’re talking about is castles in the sky you may as well be making up as you go along.
For example,
The best small modular reactor which is close to commercialization that I know of is probably NuScsale.
NuScale’s website even says that they hope to be able to build experimental prototypes in 10 years. Were you born yesterday or something? Don’t you understand that you can’t talk realistically about tech that is at least 10 years out? More to the point, you cannot make cost/effectiveness comparisons with anything that is literally a bunch of powerpoint slides and some vapor. You can’t say it won’t need extra ${whatever} because you have no knowledge about what the actual thing is actually going to work like when the actual engineering is done, if it is ever done.
To believe all that stuff, you’d have to be the most gullible sucker who’s ever lived except I don’t think you can be, because you’re sure as hell mighty skeptical about everything that’s not nuclear. It’s a bit suspicious to me.
Re safety
You still say that modern reactors need backup water pumps. This is false. Again, please read what I read above about passive decay heat removal systems on the AP-1000. Also, if you want radical advances in safety, check out next-gen molten salt reactor designs, and in particular ThorCon. ThorCon has zero safety critical mechanical moving parts. No valves. No pumps. No nothing. No mechanical moving parts are necessary for safe shutdown.
It has no valves, no pumps, no nothing, no mechanical moving parts because it doesn’t fucking exist yet it’s not even a prototype, it’s a design and a bunch of powerpoint. They say that on their web site. You need to stop talking about stuff that isn’t even at the experimental stage as if it exists and is close to production. If it had been in test for a decade already, maybe it’d be close to production but it won’t be close to a point you can even talk sensibly about for probably another 20 years.
You say:
The best small modular reactor which is close to commercialization that I know of is probably NuScsale.
Well, if you know that, and you think NuScale is ahead of the pack, then you’ve just admitted that the rest of the pack hasn’t even crossed the “START” line, yet. Even NuScale’s website says that. No wonder you started to get all hand-wavy when I asked you “where can one buy one of these things?” because – other than maybe getting a copy of a powerpoint deck, nobody’s going to see shit from NuScale for at least a decade and you know that.
That means, like I said before, that you’re comparing reality against vaporware. No wonder the vaporware looks good to you – you get to make up whatever you feel like. Maybe it’s my age but I remember when they were starting up some of the nuclear plants in the US and the story was “it’s going to be super cost-effective” etc but they hadn’t factored in construction errors, rising material costs, inflation, regulatory cost, and just plan the cost overruns of making the damn things work. There is a certain eerie familiarity with the F-35 program in all this, come to think of it: the F-35 also started out as a terrific aircraft when it was just a powerpoint deck that said “… and it will do everything really well.” Maybe you’re a fool who buys this kind of stuff but I’m not. That’s why I continue to try to remain grounded in the reality of what is available, which is why I continue to advocate for “see what works” because “what works” depends on “works” and you can make the cost/benefit analysis when you actually see how the actual thing … works.
In that post, the first comparison was rooftop solar, not utility scale solar. Please read it again. The conclusion was that the batteries were way too expensive without a grid connection.
I am talking about actual people who have the actual stuff on their actual roof and sell actual power to the actual grid and have battery backup power (not for a week, but for I think Mike said about 8hr) and it cost $20k. I don’t need your cost break-downs – I’ve been in that actual house and taken an actual shower in actually hot water heated by the on-demand electrical actual water heater powered by the actual solar roof panels. Do you have any idea how stupid you sound telling someone who has actually seen this stuff that it doesn’t exist and – meanwhile – this bunch of powerpoints over here are going to be a whole lot better so don’t do the solar panels now because in 10 years life will be all Lamborghinis and blow? You sound like an absolute ideologue or a really bad propagandist.
Here, you seem to be moving the goalposts, talking about how solar installations pay for themselves in the current market structure
No, I did not. I said one more house taken off the Washington area power grid, for $20k.
I do not give a fuck about the price structure; I care about getting people toward energy independence, and I don’t care if it means they pay more. You’re the one who kept injecting red herrings about cost and Uighur slavery. The Washington area is going to revert to a swamp (it probably will, anyway) in 20 years when the waters rise – there’s no practical cost/benefit analysis in any of that. How much would be saved if the US just paid out the ass to do renewables right now rather than waiting for nukes in 10-20 years and you know perfectly well that in the meantime the fossil fuels guys will be “tiding us over” with coal and oil.
I have said elsewhere that if I were King Thag of the US I would immediately transition all military spending to re-designing a new power grid. And yes some of it would be nuclear. I’d be all over trying to get those guys to turn their powerpoints into reality in less time. But in the meantime…
The cost/benefit analysis is your red herring. If you want to work on cost/benefit why don’t you figure out what the expected loss is if the US keeps exploiting fossil fuels until your powerpoint-based nuclear reactors become a reality, and then another 10 years for them to come online? Say, 20 years more fossil fuel exploitation? I already believe we’re heading for +4C and likely human extinction, but only an idiot isn’t going to throw everything at the problem and see what works.
Note: I’m generally in favor of hydro. Also note: depending on circumstances, some hydro dams emit the greenhouse gas equivalent of a coal power plant. No really. It’s true. And you thought hydro was always low-greenhouse gas. Thankfully, it appears that most don’t.
Yeah, so why did you bring up the greenhouse gas red herring? Seriously.
Hey, I even know that concrete (dams use lots!) releases a lot of CO2 and a lot of CO2 to make. Why not worry about that, too? You’re just throwing shit at the wall and hoping it sticks as far as I can tell. And, sure you are generally in favor of hydro – that’s why you say that nuclear is the only viable option. It may be the only option eventually and I’m OK with that but in the short term, since the next-gen nuclear stuff is still a bunch of powerpoints and theories, maybe increasing hydro deployments is a really good idea. In fact, as we are trying to discover how humanity survives this with a technological civilization and not a great big session of “Malthus was right!” maybe we need to throw everything we’ve got at the problem and see what works, then optimize where we can and if all these advanced nuclear reactors or even fusion eventually start to come online, we’ll all sing “kum ba ya” and dance. In the meantime – what’s your agenda?
That’s a very, very different claim from your original claim that it was only 10k USD to go off-grid. Basically, net-metering is bullshit. It’s bullshit for so many reasons.
That would be interesting if it was my claim. Are you just a sloppy reader or are you lying.
What I said was:
Notice: $20k is twice $10k. Yes, the “making money on it” is a consequence of subsidies, but “paid off” means that they haven’t been paying electric bills since they put the system in about 10 years ago. I don’t know their monthly bill but that seems in the ballpark. But more important is what I said: “that’s one more self-sufficient house that is not powered second-hand by fossil fuels being burned” I don’t care about the financial aspect – it’s the “one more self-sufficient house” off the grid. I mean, it’s still on the grid for emergency power and so they can sell onto the grid. Yes, that helped pay for it. But it’s one house that actually is not burning coal to keep the lights on and that’s what matters. Now, you’re going to say “that’s not possible” which is ab-so-lutely fucking surreal when you’re talking about nuclear power systems that aren’t even prototypes as if they’re real.
If I was discussing this the way you do, I’d be hypothesizing that Mike’s got a 6-th generation solar system that makes 4 times what current systems produce and costs 1/10 as much. I bet there’s some powerpoint deck from some solar company that says that, why not use that as a base for comparison so we’re comparing fiction to fiction?
It is feasible to install rooftop solar and be net positive on money. However, this is in no way a proper argument that such a plan would be feasible for the country.
Of course it’s not feasible for the entire country. Where did I say it was? I am just saying that your story about rooftop solar being impractical is bullshit. Is it practical for everyone? No. But if we had every single family home with a roof generating its own power, that would make a hell of a difference and it would free up power from other sources to light up the rest. This is not a problem that is going to be solved by some single magical bullet – even nuclear isn’t going to be able to do that.That’s why rational people keep saying that the future energy grid is going to be a mix of sources and storage and yes the non-idiots think that’s going to include nuclear.
What are the radiation levels in 2009 in Pripyat without soil removal?
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahha! You understand that without the soil removal at the reactor, the radiation level at Pripyat would be a lot higher than it is, today? There was radioactive dust all over the damn place. Pripyat was decontaminated with foam/bleach wash-down. They removed the soil for miles around the reactor because that stuff was seriously contaminated by the burned radioactive graphite from the core, but there was ash all over the place. The fallout cloud was bad enough that it started setting of radmeters in labs in Sweden, which is how the rest of the world discovered something had happened.
Yes, in 2009, the radiation is not so bad. Because they cleaned it up. Exactly the point. What you’re saying is basically (and I agree) “the clean-up worked!” YAY! But that doesn’t mean that the radiation leak from the reactor wasn’t horrible, it means that the clean-up worked.
Marcus was simply wrong that soil removal was necessary to safely visit there, and I would go further that soil removal was mostly unnecessary if one was willing to accept an evacuation for a decade or three.
So, why did the Soviets do something unnecessary?
I didn’t say the soil removal was necessary to safely visit there, I asked why it was necessary at all. You appear to think that maybe the Soviets could have just let the reactor keep spewing radioactive shit all over the place for 30 years?
You’re funny. I’m sure that if the Soviets had gotten good advice like that they would have taken it and just saved the money.
What about Fukushima? Is that also an excess of caution? It’s gonna be OK in 30 years?
Next, tell me how a solar roof panel causes me to have to evacuate a chunk of my state if something goes wrong with it.
I’m not one of those “never nuclear” ideologues, by a long shot. And, as you noted, I wasn’t worried about the radiation level in Pripyat or even Reactor #6 (the one next door) when I visited. But I think you’ve been a bit dismissive of legitimate concerns regarding nuclear reactor safety. There have been a few incidents: Windscale, Three Mile Island, Fukushima, Chernobyl, the Idaho National Lab incident, and the clean-ups at Hanford – that are enough to make any rational person adjust the cost/benefit analysis to include maybe losing a town or two for 30 years.
The thing is, the biggest enemy to the environment and the people is Green ideology.
No it’s not, you fucking supreme jackass – the biggest enemy is fossil fuel companies’ long-term campaign to suppress information about the problems with greenhouse emissions, which effort continues to this day.
You’re not talking to any of those “Green” ideologues here. I’ve already said that repeatedly. Most of the commentariat(tm) who have commented at all said that they also see that nuclear is part of the solution. Why are you here arguing with the choir when we’d be singing along with you if you weren’t being such an argumentative ass? And a bad arguer, at that. That’s why I’m arguing with you, actually – I don’t think your ideas are going to get any traction, anywhere, because they’re stupid and obvious except for where they’re naive and overly optimistic. We’re on your side, we’re just not convinced that the nuclear guys who say they’ll have all this great stuff in 10 years (and be deploying it in 20) are going to succeed and we want to not, you know, bake in the meantime. How is that not obvious to you?
Our goal needs to be 100% reductions, not 30% reductions.
So you’re demanding a goal you know cannot be achieved, either by wind and solar, or by nuclear. You do know, do you not, that NOTHING is going to get to 100% right away, right? Even France isn’t at 100%, remember? You do know we can only get to 100% in steps both large and small, right?
You are literally making an unattainable perfect the enemy of an attainable good. This only reinforces my theory that you’re a Republican propagandist.
You sound like an absolute ideologue or a really bad propagandist.
“Or?”
Suppose you get 42% solar and wind. The necessary amount of nuclear reactors to produce 58% would be almost the same amount as producing 100%. That’s my problem.
Ooohhhhhhh… I see your problem. Your problem is that you are sure that the nuclear will be there to produce 58% and in the meantime everyone should just boil slowly in their shells and trust that the nukes will show up on time. You’re a trusting soul, bless your heart.
Moveover, they’re worse than useless, because someone has to pay for the extra solar and wind, and extra transmission. At 42% levels, someone probably needs to start paying for other things too, like extra infrastructure for extra capacity payments, grid inertia, frequency control services, and maybe even blackstart capability
That point has been repeatedly debunked, including by me. For one thing, we’re wealthy enough to do that, build the excess capacity, and even throw it away if we want to. We spend $800bn/year on our military. We have the money, we just aren’t spending it. So, fuck all that. The alternative is that we return the planet to Permian-quality climate.
You’re a strange mix – on one hand, you’re so optimistic that the nuclear stuff is going to be ready when you think it will, and it’ll just be fantastic, and on the other hand you’re hyper-skeptical about all the other stuff. Why don’t you apply a similar level of skepticism, or optimism, consistently?
Put differently, what on earth warrants your unjustified optimism about nuclear engineering and the nuclear guys’ ability to deliver usable technology on time? You seem to be full of doubts about other energy systems, which is weird because they actually, you know, exist and deliver power right now.
There’s also the political problem here. Raising electricity prices, or taxes, whatever, even more is not politically acceptable.
Politically, nuclear power is not politically acceptable, either. You can’t say that one set of trade-offs does not apply in one direction but does in another. Not unless you want to look like a propagandist.
ThorCon doesn’t exist, but the AP-1000 definitely does, and the AP-1000 has passive decay heat removal. So, yea, not sure why you’re focusing on the other one and ignoring the one that does exist.
This little bitty thing?
Sure, I bet they can just slap one together in a week, right?
That’s a pressurized water nuclear reactor and it’s got a pretty big footprint. Passive decay heat removal is better than depending on emergency pumps, etc, sure. Like I said, I think we should be building more nukes. What kind of idiot are you, how many times do I have to repeat that?
WE SHOULD BE BUILDING MORE BETTER NUKES. OK?
It looks like that’s a better version of the kind of nuclear reactor that’s already been built. Great, I’m a fan of incremental improvements. That’s part of “throw everything we’ve got at the problem”
Sure, if they wanted lights during the 6 hours of bright daylight. Again, you’re neglecting the problems of intermittency and storage.
Christ, you fucking jackass – that’s the only option they HAVE. They can’t just go get someone to buy them an AP-1000 or something wonderful that hasn’t been developed, yet. They have to deal with the situation that they are in and not sit around praying for a silver bullet.
You’re right that this is a political problem and the main issue is allocation of effort. I’m glad that your input is going to be mostly ignored.
Apropos nothing:
This is to give a sense of the scale of an old-school RBMK reactor; that’s where the core would sit had it been installed (Reactor #6, construction halted when the other one blew up) – little British dude added for scale
From the outside, this is the main wing of Reactor #6. To get an idea of the scale, look at the upper middle of the building and you can see the normal-sized flights of steel stairs. The exterior shell of the building is great big sheets of rusty steel tack-welded onto the I-beam frame. The whole thing is cubic fuckwads of concrete with this great big steel building around it. It’s in a sort of L-shape, with the tail of the L being where the generation equipment would have gone.
They’re awe-inspiringly massive. Everything is at a brobdignagian scale.
Raging Bee@#118:
This only reinforces my theory that you’re a Republican propagandist.
I’m starting to see your point. But surely the republicans can afford better.
I still don’t get why this jackass is bothering with freethoughtblogs – we’re not decision influencers or policy setters, they’re wasting their precious time and passion here, not convincing anyone of anything and discrediting themself.
I couldnt help seeing a solid object in that wankers jiz of text as I skimmid past it to see everyone elses pleasantries.
US$2.50 per Watt to install solar in the USA.
WTF?
Here we pay AU$1.50 per Watt installed. Converted to greenback that is about US$1.20 per Watt installed. If you want to take up the government’s generous solar incentive, the cost installed drops to an average somewhere between AU$0.8 and AU$1.00
In NZ it is about NZ$2.00 per Watt installed. That is about US$1.40. NZ is a long way from just about everywhere and csn offer a PV system installed for US$1.10 per Watt less than in the mighty USA.
I am sure that given what I know of the laboyr market there in the US of A the extra $1.10 doesn’t go to wages.
So what is going on in the USA? I suspect government shenanigans at play artificially increasing the cost of renewables in the USA. Would be interesting to find out.
And is textwall man really comparing the cost of a 4kW PV system with an as-yet imaginary 4kW nuclear power plant? What an ignorant ${genitalia} he is.
Then, of course after I touched his jiz, I just HAD to wash my hands.
On another note, he is not sincere in any of his dealngs with any of us here. He is a patent fraud
I recommend a good read of the latest World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2021 available here: https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/World-Nuclear-Industry-Status-Report-2021-773.html
Published a few weeks ago it debunks most of what our friendly resident radioactive racist fuckwit spouts. I leave it to my more esteemed commentariat members to analyse anf use (most of you here are far smarter than I, with one obvious exception:)
And lastly, we need to have him kept busy here where it is safe lest he wreaks havoc somewhere the world cannot afford him to be.
In proper engineering, we never throw every possible solution at the problem.
Oh, are you a proper engineer?
Of course throwing every possible solution at the problem is the right thing to do. For one thing, we don’t have the luxury of gambling that things are going to just work out if we bet entirely on one approach. Sure, if the situation is well-understood and the properties of the various approaches are also understood, then you can make a good cost/benefit analysis – but the climate crisis is not such a situation. The potential solutions – all of them are unknowns and therefore cost/benefit analysis is just a wild-ass guess.
I might just as easily hypothesize (as you do) that clean reliable high output nuclear power will be readily available, or that briefcase fusion systems might be available in 10 years. Or, that solar panels will become 2000x more efficient. That’s all science fiction, which is why we have to base our solutions on what’s available now, what we understand, and our time-frame. If any one of the technologies we can pursue turns out to have a breakthrough and become massively better, then – great. I notice that you’re very positive about nuclear power (I am too but I’m not optimistic, I’ll get to that) but I notice that for some reason you’re only willing to argue that mankind should bank its collective fate on nuclear power. Since you’re jumping after moonbeams why not just assume fusion power is going to be available in 10 years and we’ll terraform the whole planet? Could it be that you realize that banking on fusion to come through for us would be a really stupid strategy?
There’s another problem, which you consistently ignore; actually two. I’ve explained them already, from multiple angles and I’m going to make one final attempt (mostly playing to the crowd, because I think you’re too dense or dishonest to pay attention and think) and here they are:
1) time
2) no one size fits all solution
Time: we don’t have 20 years to wait and see if nuclear comes through, or fusion comes through, or jesus comes in all his glory and makes everything OK. That means we have to deal with the disaster with what we’ve got – which means: the whole grab-bag. Some technologies may improve because of investment in them, and that’ll be a good thing, too. Nuclear seems to be improving, on powerpoint, because of investment in it, and that’s also a positive thing. I wish, as you probably do, that I could go back in time 30 years and somehow get people building nuclear reactors 20 years ago, but that’s not an option. So, we’re in a lifeboat situation not an engineering consultation and when you’re in a lifeboat you grab everything you might need because you don’t know what the future has in store for you. This is not a situation where zero-sum logic applies, and we should be willing to over-spend rather than under-spend; there’s plenty of money. If you want to scream about zero-sum expenditures why aren’t you ranting about the defense budget, like I do?
2) The “silver bullet” approach results in a “one size fits all” solution. I tried to get this point across when I was referring to the Puerto Ricans who don’t have the money or political clout to get a nuclear reactor, yet still need to do basic electricity-using things. Only a fucking idiot would tell them “don’t waste your time on day to day survival because in 10 years nuclear power will solve your needs.” Uh, what about the present? Some of the grab-bag of technologies we have (like solar panels) can be dropped into places with relatively little infrastructure, and be useful. Rich countries with lots of infrastructure and blockheaded assholes like you can go ahead and build nukes, but you’re an ass if you want to say that people shouldn’t use perfectly good clean energy where and if they can get it. If some day the silver bullet comes and everyone has infinite clean fusion power, then perhaps we’ll laugh about the whole thing but I bet that in that extremely unlikely event, having alternatives would keep the capitalists (who, you know, will have control of the technology if it is developed) from being able to gouge everyone. Have you failed to think about that?
The “silver bullet” approach is an approach that works for lazy rich people who are comfortable in the knowledge that they’ll ride the worst of the disaster out relatively comfortably. They can wait 20 years for a flotilla of new nuclear power plants to come online. The “throw everything we’ve got at it” acknowledges that we are facing desperate times, and that some poor migrants trying to get out of a hot zone might want a solar panel because they damn sure aren’t getting a powerpoint-based nuke. Those folks are, in fact, never going to get nuclear power, or fusion, because they’ll be lucky if their governments don’t just kill them from sheer incompetence.
And that, right there, is why I am sure you are not competent to understand the situation the world is in. You think that the people of the world are going to sit back and go “oh, yeah, let’s wait because GerrardOfTitanServer has figured out the cost/benefit balance and we should all just sit here in the dark until the nukes come online.” What kind of fucking idiot are you? The world has ignored and will continue to ignore you, because you’re barking up the wrong tree. What is going to happen is going to happen regardless of what some random internet asshat (that’s you) yells about on some blog with a dwindling but loyal audience. The fact that you don’t understand that means that it’s a good thing the world is going to ignore you, because you’re as close to totally wrong as you can get, which is sad because you obviously are smart (enough) and do your research, but you’ve gone way too far down this nuclear pipe-dream and you’re not thinking strategically. Or Raging Bee is right and you’re a republican provocateur. Either way, I want you to fuck off, now.
“…the biggest enemy to the environment and the people is Green ideology.” – GerrardOfTitanServer.
Not Global Overheating, the impact of grenehouse gases on our planet’s climate,
Not the fossil fools and Murdoch & other reichwing propagandists pushing Climate Denialism.
Not the mass extinction we’re in with massive biodiversity loss
Not deforestation,
Not desertification,
Not rising salinity poisioning large areas of land knocked out of balance by pollution and poor agricultural practices,
Not ocean acidification, that toxic liquid consequence of our GHG emissions.
Not the over population issue pushed by religious fundamnetalist misogynists of varying stripes from the Pope to the Ayatollahs,
Not the Capitalist system that values short-term profit and greed over long term environmental damage and pushes poor people into doing environmentally unsusatinable things for lack of options and the power of big Corporations.
Nope, the biggest threat to our planet according to GerrardOfTitanServer is the loosly defined “Green ideology” held by a diverse group of people who actually care about and work to protect the environment because it doesn’t fervidly embrace the nuclear power industry.
Seriously? That sort of line GerrardOfTitanServer is just bizarre, extreme, ludicrous, inaccurate and counter-productive and makes you look like a absolute crank.
I’m starting to see your point. But surely the republicans can afford better.
They’re following your advice: throw everything they have at the “problem” (which is us).
In proper engineering, we never throw every possible solution at the problem.
Of course we don’t, at least not all in one project or experiment. We generally start different projects, each involving one of all the possible solutions: one for solar, one for wind, one for nuclear, etc. If you don’t know that, then you know absolutely nothing about “proper engineering.”
Argh, I don’t know Why a damn link only links back to this page no matter what. I am not formatting it wrong, and now my entire carefully linked and blockquoted comment is gone because I tried to preview and check the link before posting. (So maybe GOTS is also trying to post real links but it’s not actually linking with the a href format?)
Hydropower retrofits are the current plan to provide the black start capability that Gerry was claiming couldn’t be solved without building more nuclear power.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/can-retrofitting-dams-for-hydro-provide-a-green-energy-boost
Tethys
When hydropower can provide at most a few percent of the grid power over the world, that’s not enough for blackstart capability. Again, hydro power is a rounding error in these discussions. Hydro power is limited to roughly 500 GW or a little more worldwide. Power demand is already at 20 TW, and it’ll be 30 TW by 2030.
…
Raging Bee.
We could get to practically 100% emission reductions from electricity in a mere 20 years. 30 years would be easy. This is not an impossible goal. France did it. France built enough nuclear reactors in 15 years to convert most of their grid, and there was no technical issue that would have stopped them from going to 100% in the same amount of time.
…
StevoR
Green-ideology is the primary cause of continued global warming.
Green-ideology is a bigger cause of global warming than climate change denial. Dr James Hansen and Dr Kerry Emanuel agree with me.
Ditto for biodiversity loss, and ocean acidification.
Ditto for deforestation because Greens are the biggest opposition to widespread deployment of inorganic fertilizer.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/01/forgotten-benefactor-of-humanity/306101/Did you know that much of the western industrialized world has seen huge forest regrowth in the last 100 years? We’re not losing forests for wood products. For example, we’re losing forests in the Amazon becaues they don’t have access to cheap fertilizer, and so they burn down some forest which makes for excellent fertilizer for a year or five. Slash-and-burn farming.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash-and-burnDesertification, I don’t know enough to comment.
Re overpopulation. This one is much more complicated than merely blaming religion. If you look at birth rates per woman vs GDP per capita, you see a very strong inverse relationship. As countries get richer, they have less kids. Already, basically every industrialized country already has a birth rate per woman which is below breakeven. This is undoubtably due to many effects, including cheaper access to birth control, and giving women career options outside of the home. It’s poor subsistence farmers that have a lot of kids. Career-oriented women have less kids. The fix for overpopulation is to raise the rest of the world out of poverty. Thankfully, they’re already doing that, which is why projections are the world population maxing out around 10 or 11 billion. Unfortuately, they’re doing it with coal.
No, that’s what the Greens are doing by pushing short-term incomplete solutions, like Marcus here. It’s also what Greens are doing by pushing LCOE analysis which uses financial discounting which explicitly favors short-term thinking, which is why solar and wind look so cheap compared to nuclear under LCOE analysis; it’s because LCOE analysis pretends that nuclear is 3x to 9x more expensive by “discounting” 3x to 9x of the value of the plant.
https://thoughtscapism.com/2019/11/05/decarbonisation-at-a-discount-lets-not-sell-future-generations-short/…
Marcus
I see nothing wrong with saying 1- conventional pressurized gen 3+ nuclear reactors are good enough to be building lots of them right away, and 2- MSRs will likely be better. I don’t need #2 to be true in order for #1 to be true.
I don’t think MSRs are all hype. ORNL ran the MSRE, Molten Salt Reactor Experiment, back in the 1960s. They had like 5 years of a reactor core running. I don’t think it’s all hype.
Re passive decay heat removal. I called out the AP-1000 many times by name as a reactor that exists and which also has passive decay heat removal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000Quoting:Four AP1000 reactors were constructed in China, at Sanmen Nuclear Power Plant in Zhejiang, and Haiyang Nuclear Power Plant in Shandong.[49] The Sanmen unit 1 and unit 2 AP1000s were connected to the grid on 2 July 2018 and 24 August 2018 respectively.[50] Haiyang 1 started commercial operation on October 22, 2018,[51] Haiyang 2 on January 9, 2019.[52]
I never claimed that small modular reactors are ready right now for deployment. I’ve said this many times. I don’t know what the source of the confusion is.
Re your friend Mike. Again, that system only works because he’s connected to the grid. Otherwise he’d experience regular blackouts. 8 hours of storage with no grid connection is not enough to avoid regular blackouts. Mike is a leach on society, enabled by corrupt regulations and market structure. Mike is leaching off all of the poor people who cannot afford the upfront costs of rooftop solar and a Tesla battery pack by passing increased grid electricity prices onto them. In other words, if everyone tried Mike’s plan, grid electricity would become a lot more expensive, and negate any personal benefits. It doesn’t work if everyone tries. Again, that’s why I said that Mike is a leach on the system. Also, at 20k USD, that’s more than double the cost of his fair share of Hinkley C or Vogtle, and that’s about as high as nuclear power plant prices have ever gotten. Double.
When you say “taken off the grid”, do you mean Mike who still relies on the grid connection? I hope not.
Even if they have to pay 10x more? At such prices, it becomes prohibitively expensive. The idea of “energy independence” at the household level is practically impossible.
Why ask questions to which you already know how I will answer? Because renewables cannot replace fossil fuels. Delaying construction of nuclear means that we’ll have those fossil fuel usage around even longer until people like you come to their senses. It’s not just a 2x price difference. It’s at least a 10x price difference. Society cannot handle that kind of price increase for energy. It would collapse. It was coal that enabled the industrial revolution. We couldn’t have the industrial revolution on just burning wood, or on renewables.
In the space of a few short sentences in a single paragraph, I said that I like hydro, and that some hydro has significant methane emissions, but thankfully it only applies to a few plants. It was public education. I don’t see how that qualifies as a “red herring”. You’re being unreasonable.
Why not worry about the CO2 from concrete from the dams? Because it’s a very small compared to coal or natural gas, and thus hydro is a marked improvement. This is different for methane emissions from a small number of hydro reservoirs which exceed the eqiuvalent greenhouse gas emissions of some coal power plants. That’s something to worry about.
Again, Mike’s home is not self-sufficient. He relies on the grid connection to avoid regular and prolonged blackouts. The grid connection is not merely there for “emergency power”. With only 8 hours of storage, the grid is supplying necessary power for huge fractions of the time – easily 20% or more. 20% of a year is more than 2 months. If he’s in a cold climate, he would become a human popsicle without that grid connection (or natural gas line).
Again, I’m pushing the plan that we should be building conventional gen 3+ reactors as fast as we can, such as the AP-1000. I never said we should wait until ThorCon. I’ve said this many times. You suck at reading.
No it would not! It would not. Do the math. Do the modeling. It would not. I’ve cited the papers. Covering every building with solar would do very little to reducing the total number of coal + natural gas ( + hydro + nuclear) plants required. We would still need enough conventional plants in order to cover maximum supply for when there is no sun and no wind. More solar and more wind would not substantially reduce this number.
What happens is that the NRDC and others influence the public utilities commissions in places like Texas with this lie. It wasn’t just the lack of winterization that caused the recent Texas blackout. It was lobbying by the NRDC which convinced the utility commission to pretend against all evidence that wind and solar were more reliable than they really were, and so they started retiring some coal and natural gas. The result at crunch time was a blackout.
Lots of sources like to pretend that all power sources had problems during the recent Texas blackout, but that’s basically a lie. Yes they all had problems, but not all problems were equal. Texas wind was IIRC at single digit capacity, like 3% IIRC, and nuclear was at 75%. One of the four plants went offline because a non-safety temperature sensor broke which triggered a shutdown; otherwise nuclear would have been running at 100% capacity.
If you want another example, this one only a near miss, look at this:
https://atomicinsights.com/performance-new-england-power-grid-extreme-cold-dec-25-jan-8/This is what your future is going to look like if you kepe pushing this dangerous lie that solar and wind are actually useful. More blackouts. Eventually, after enough blackouts, people will realize the truth that solar and wind cannot cut it, and that we need reliable generators. I’d rather we get to that conclusion now instead of a decade or two from now.
Sources please.
Which is not soil removal.
No, the point was soil removal.
I thought you did. I seem unable to find the quote. My apologies for now.
AFAIK, it’s already safe now. The level of radiation release from Fukushima was way less than Chernobyl, and the sources that I can find say that background radiation levels are already to safe levels, and most of the evacuation should not have happened, and most of the soil cleanup should not have happend.
One, I reject the premise. Chernobyl didn’t have a containment building, and that was a big reason why it was so bad. Fukushima had a containment building, as well as other improvements, and that’s why it wasn’t so bad. As I just said above, most of the evacuation was not necessary, especially the continued evacuation zone months afterwards when we knew that radiation levels were not harmful.
Also, if you’re in Florida, solar cells on your roof could “cause” you to have to move if you were in Florida from the coastal flooding from of sea level rise because we didn’t take effective mitigation strategies for climate change.
Also, I don’t think you’re taking into account the scale of waste from solar and wind.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-on-earthAny “rational” person wouldn’t include Three Mile Island in that list at all. It’s nothing even remotely like Fukushima and Three Mile Island. A rational person would look at Three Mile Island and see that, despite all of the fuckups that happened, the safety systems still worked. It should be treated as a success case, not a failure.
Hanford is also, IIRC, nuclear weapons stuff only. Please don’t include nuclear weapons manufacture waste in this discussion. It’s a completely different process, chemically and nuclearly, that leaves behind an entirely different kind of waste.
Places like California were on track in the 1960s and 1970s to build enough nuclear reactors to reach net-zero on electricity, but Jerry Brown and his Green allies killed those plans in their tracks.
The reason why we still haven’t fixed the climate problem is that the Green-aligned voting groups and politicians would rather build new coal power plants and natural gas plants than keep an existing nuclear power plant running. See New York, California, Germany, and so on.
15 to 30 years to build enough nuclear for the world can be done. France proved it. By contrast, Germany proved that you cannot do the same thing with renewables. You’re the one trusting your isolated anecdotal evidence against the overwhelming evidence and scientific consensus against you.
I know you say that you’re open and welcoming to some nuclear, but you also seem to be saying that nuclear is not necessary, and that’s my problem. You’re perpetuating the same Green misinformation that solar and wind can work at national scales and worldwide to replace fossil fuels, and they cannot.
Again, we are not wealthy enough to spend 10x more on energy. No one is. That would likely reduce us to something lik ea pre-industrial civilization.
Again, France. France built enough nuclear plants in 15 years, from construction start to finish, to cover more than half of their grid, and there was no technical reason that they couldn’t have done 100%. Scale that up to the rest of the world. Other parts of the world lack the same industrial base and skill base, and so it’ll take a little longer if we scale that up, but it proves that nuclear can be built quickly.
Nuclear power will become politically acceptable once people start having regular blackouts, like the recent blackout in Texas, and some of the recent blackouts in California. (Not all of the recent blackouts in California were caused by fire risk. Some of them were caused by insufficient supply, just like in Texas.)
Obviously not. But when you take the average over the whole world, the whole world could create, on average, one of those every week. It wouldn’t even be that hard. Again based on France actually having done it, and extrapolating to the industrial capacity of the whole world.
Because I’m not a shill. I’m a regular here, and it pains me so much when my side, the pro-science side, has a huge blindspot that is causing untold human misery and suffering.
You want to see me in a live video chat? You want to see my driver’s license, and US and state tax returns? I have no financial interests in any of this – apart from being a citizen of the planet. Insinuating that I’m a troll is beneath you. I thought you maybe apologized for calling me a troll. I guess you’re taking that back?
I agree, which is why we should go with proven nuclear technology instead of next-gen technology (while continuing R&D into all of the above). I’ve been very clear on this. You’re strawmanning me again. Knock that off.
That’s a fixable political problem, and not a technical problem. There is no technical reason why Puerto Ricans can’t have nuclear power. Compared to the political problem of making everyone poor, which is what renewables would do, the nuclear political problem can be solved.
You’re an ass for suggesting that electricity for 6 hours a day is anywhere near as remotely useful or valuable as 24 hours a day. You can’t run a modern society on electricity 6 hours a day. Batteries is not going to fix that problem either.
Let’s assume you’re right, and that we have more than enough money to waste some on solar panels. Sure, ship in some solar panels as some sort of 10% stopgap measure. Go nuts. It’s in no way a replacement for 24-7 electricity.
So they can have lights during the day and charge their phones? What good are the phones without power during the other parts of the day to power the cell towers, and the internet servers, etc.? It’s not enough to maintain a water system. It’s probably not enough to maintain proper food refrigeration and medicine refrigeration. It’s not good enough to maintain many of the basic necessities of life that you take for granted because you don’t experience regular blackouts.
Why aren’t they going to get nuclear power? Let’s try to get them nuclear power. This is a solvable problem. Renewables replacing fossil fuels – that is not a solvable problem. You can’t change the laws of physics.
I don’t remember a law of physics that states that renewable energy can’t replace imaginary nuclear power.
If GOTS had bothered to read my last source, he might have noticed actual numbers attached to the retrofits and statements like this.
Seriously, it’s like listening to my Dad, who spent his civil engineer career building coal plants and dams for the federal government. Stuck in a 50s mindset and not actually interested in dealing with the dire results of building coal plants because he might experience remorse over that fact.
Typo:
Any “rational” person wouldn’t include Three Mile Island in that list at all. It’s nothing even remotely like Fukushima and Three Mile Island Chernobyl.
Tethys
“can play a role”
Yes. It can “play a role”. It’s going to play a 2% role. That still leaves the other 98%.
I strongly doubt you’d write about it concisely. So, maybe just draw me a little picture of how renewables will make everyone poor. I’d love to see that.
If we’re spending some amount of money on it (pick any number you like), then doesn’t that imply that people are being paid? Where else would the money go?
Would you generally consider it a problem that someone’s being paid for their work? Certainly, some of that money is just capitalistic profits derived from ownership and not work, but we can say exactly the same thing about nuclear of course. So just leave that to the side for now…. Do you have strong opinions either for or against workers being employed to do various things in the energy sector (as opposed to anything else)? Or if not, then what is the issue exactly?
I also don’t get why anything like that must mean prices go up for consumers. Since you didn’t respond to it before, I’ll say it again: nationalize all of it. Then I will quote you, since these seem to be the magic words which are needed to justify that: “That’s a fixable political problem, and not a technical problem.”
consciousness razor
Money, under some idealized description, is a description of several things: The amount and kind of labor necessary to produce something. The amount and rarity of the material in something. As a special case, the amount of energy necessary to produce something.
You could have any kind of economical system that you want, and it won’t change the problems with renewables. Already, about 1% of the population works in energy production. That’s a quite high proportion of the population, relatively speaking. Solar and wind require many more times the amount of materials compared to alternatives. They require many times more labor compared to alternatives. This is reflected in their money costs, but it’s not about the money. It’s about the physical reality of building and maintaining it.
You can’t run the world on hamsters in wheels no matter what money system you have, and you can’t run the world on solar and wind either for exactly the same reasons: The energy source is too expensive in terms of its inputs, including labor, materials, and energy inputs.
The costs in terms of labor, materials, and energy inputs to maintain a grid of 30 TW with the same sort of uptime as today would such a mammoth undertaking that society would probably collapse under its weight – just like if society tried to run itself on hamsters in wheels.
I haven’t noticed anyone mention in this thread that solar and wind tend to be fairly complementary, in the sense that solar provides power during the day and more during summer, while wind is generally stronger at night and during winter. With large spread-out networks that have a combination of both (since highly localized conditions may not be great sometimes if they’re too isolated from each other), you can get much more reliable output for everybody.
You aren’t even trying Gerard. It’s going to play a 2% role huh? Yet we’ve barely started retrofitting and the actual numbers are..
There are 22 projects currently underway on the Mississippi and Allegheny rivers to add generators to existing infrastructure, and another 88 in various stages of development.
Hydro can easily be a reliable and constant source of constant clean energy within 10 years. It’s potential is barely tapped at present. Wind and solar make up another large portion of energy that is being generated right now, every day, so stop claiming that nuclear is the one true solution and any other electricity is anathema.
Nonsense. Nobody has ever paid or will ever pay money to an amount of energy. You’re paying a worker, or else you’re paying a capitalist who’s exploiting a worker.
Relative to what? Surely not the whole population. And I mean, in this universe and with the energy demands we have (which you insist can’t go down under any circumstances), it’s not astonishing to me that there are a lot of people working on energy. So what?
Well, you definitely made it sound like it was about the money — the prices consumers would supposedly pay, to be specific.
I think the physical reality of building and maintaining something has to do with people being paid to do some work: namely, building and maintaining that thing. It’s not as if you’re dumping dollar bills into the ground whenever a hole needs to be dug. Somebody is being paid for that.
I just have no clue what the “hamsters in wheels” bullshit is about…. Maybe just take another look at the fucking scoreboard: renewables are providing more power than nuclear in the US. They are in fact growing, as emerging new technologies, and in fact it is not. So, if you’re going to keep making it sound like they do nothing or less than nothing, then I will just keep posting that link until you give up.
Tethys
The math is very simple.
Worldwide today, hydro power is 500 GW, real production, not capacity. All of the good hydro spots are dammed already. This number cannot be made much bigger than it already is. There are only so many rivers with large drops and geography suitable to creating a reservoir.
Today, worldwide power demand, including energy, transport, industrial heat uses, etc., everything, is about 20 TW. By 2030, it’ll be 30 TW.
500 GW / 30 TW = about 0.017 = 1.7%.
…
consciousness razor
I have indirectly to refute this notion. Again, please see the paper that I cited which explores this in detail.
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2018/ee/c7ee03029khttps://kencaldeira.wordpress.com/2018/03/01/geophysical-constraints-on-the-reliability-of-solar-and-wind-power-in-the-united-states/Again, the tl;dr is: You would at least: an overbuild factor of solar and wind of 2x, at least 12 hours of batteries, and a cross-continent tranmsission grid. Note that the model explicitly assumes lossloss storage, lossless transmission, and infinite capacity transmission. It also doesn’t model requirements for grid inertia, frequency control services, and blackstart capability. This is how I reached the cost estimate of 10x more expensive than nuclear. If you don’t use a cross continent transmission grid and try to go off-grid at the house level, assuming you want the same level of up-time on electricity supply, then you would need like 3 weeks of storage (same source), which is close to 100x more expensive than just building nuclear.
The point is that when we only had wood to burn and farm animals to use, most people had to work in agriculture in order to provide enough food. It was the industrial revolution that permitted high yield agriculture techniques, including inorganic fertilizer, large scale irrigation, tractors, pesticides, GMOs, etc., which radically improved the amount of food that a single laborer could produce. This allowed people to move to cities to work in factories.
The industrial revolution requires high energy density, cheap, energy, such as in the form of coal. We could not have had the industrial revolution on mere wood and farm animals.
Solar and wind are more like wood and farm animals than it is to coal. You can’t have an industrial society that runs on it.
Could you at least pretend to engage with my arguments? I’ve explained this time and time again to you in this thread and others, and yet you ignore it and pretend that I’ve made other arguments. It’s really quite frustrating.
The problem with solar and wind is that they’re intermittent with common mode failures. You can’t run an industrial society on intermittent electricity. Solar and wind can provide “economical” power up to a certain point, approx 30% of the grid, before you start hitting frequent moments where you have excess solar and wind supply compared to demand. That’s when the problems start. That’s when you need to start talking about cross-continent transmission, storage, backup, grid inertia, frequency control services (and later blackstart capability). Everything up to 30% is relatively easy. It gets exponentially harder from there. Look at the paper that I’ve cited.
Re hamsters in wheels. I explained myself quite well. You cannot run an industrial society by maintaining a large population of hamsters which you “trick” to run in little hamster wheels which you attach to generators. There is no amount society structure that would permit this to work. The numbers of labor, materials, and energy simply don’t add up. The same is true for solar and wind because of their intermittency and common mode failures. It just doesn’t work because of deep fundamental issues. In other words, you cannot describe a working 100% solution that wouldn’t immediately collapse under its own weight.
PS:
Worldwide energy demands can only go up. Poor countries are going to industrialize to improve their quality of life. They want clean drinking water. Refrigeration for safe food and medicine. Sewage treatment. Indoor heating and cooling. Internet. Industry. All of these things take energy.
You could maybe get significant energy efficiency improvements to American and Europe, but in order to raise the rest of the world to the same standard of living, you would still need more power consumption worldwide compared to today’s power consumption. Worldwide energy usage can only go up. It’s impossible to convince poor people to remain poor enough that worldwide energy consumption would go down.
Marcus
See:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-trumps-solar-in-india/They understand the radical difference in value between electricity during some daylight hours vs 24-7 electricity. Why can’t you?
Then it’s all the more remarkable how nuclear is losing to the wood and farm animals, isn’t it?
Damn, you sure have refuted me. There go all of my secret socialist plans to put large populations of little hamsters in wheels attached to generators.
I’m not like you, Gerrard. I was not suggesting we should try to aim for 100% from only wind and solar. I said they complement one another well.
Also, the study you’re citing isn’t combining wind and solar with our many other options: nuclear, hydro, geothermal, etc. That gives us plenty to work with, probably even if there were zero additional growth in those non-solar/wind sources for the rest of time. (But I don’t want that either. I’d be happy to see more of all of the above. You see how this works?)
For some reason, though, you act like that’s somehow supposed to be a devastating argument against wind and solar. How can I put this gently? It’s not.
You are so dishonest Gerard. The alternative is that you are not very bright, since you fail to grasp that there are thousands of dams that currently generate **zero** electricity, which are in the process of being retrofit to produce hydropower. Now. Red Rock Iowa just started producing power, but was originally built in the 60s. Very wasteful, no?
Additionally, hydro storage is 90% of the **current** long term power storage. This could easily be increased to provide the black start energy required by the grid. Several small generators works just as well to power a grid as one massive centralized generator. Adding both to current infrastructure is cheaper and much faster than adding nuclear. Especially since the law currently has a moratorium on building any new nuclear capacity. And of course, we still don’t have that cheap and safe disposal of the hazardous waste that you claimed exists.
All of Gerrard’s numbers are suspect at best because he keeps citing power generation in watts instead of watt-hours. I’m not sure how to convert the credible numbers into the ones in his strange brain, but at a glance the current worldwide production of hydroelectricity appears to be a good solid 100 times the numbers he’s citing.
damnit, GerardOfTitanServer, you are sounding like you are taking debating strategies from a creationist.
As if you can manage to convince people that 100% strictly PV solar, everywhere, all the time, without any problems isn’t viable, then you can simultaneously convince them that solar doesn’t work, period, and therefore we must use 100% strictly nuclear.
Nobody is arguing for 100% solar, 100% wind, 100% geothermal, 100% hydro, or any other strict/pure source. Except you, with your insistence that anything other than 100% fission will doom us all. And that’s been brought up by nearly everyone participating in this comment thread, yet you seem to keep ignoring it. I’ probably the most anti-nuclear commenter here, and mostly I just want to see it regulated and handled better than it has been, I’m not entirely opposed to it, especially if it can help stave off global warming.
If you find out a building you are working in is suddenly at a much more increased risk of fire then previously thought, sure, you might want to think about installing a sprinkler system and such. But that will take too long, and if you don’t want it to burn down next week, you send someone to the store to buy a bunch of fucking fire extinguishers, distribute them throughout the building, and keep some people around who are trained to use them. Demanding sprinkler-system only is just going to end up with a burnt down building while they are drawing up the plans for the sprinkler system install.
And as to your “engineering” bit about only using a single “best” solution, why are their so many different types of bridges? because we use what we think will work best with the resources and constraints we have. It’s foolish not to take advantage of renewable sources where they are plentiful.
Let’s put solar arrays in the desert and high-altitude places, let’s use hydro in the fjords or where we already have rivers damned for other reasons. Let’s put in wind turbines in consistently windy passes and off-shore sites. Let’s turn our sewer systems into methane digesters. Let’s build more efficiently, and use passive solar for climate control, and solar hot-water heating. Let’s change our travel to prioritize light rail, public transit, cycling, and walking. And sure, let’s build some more nuclear energy plants as well, let’s just try and do it right, and not cut corners, not skirt safety procedures, follow regulations, and keep corporations and profit out of the equation
What, did an environmentalist kill your dog or something?
A well qualified building owner in my area can finance a 10kw solar array that is rated to last 25 years, average payout after six, for about 11,500 after various incentives. The 2.5 million rental fee for hazardous storage that is paid to the Prairie Island Band would pay for over 200 solar home systems. That is a recurring yearly amount BTW, not a one time payment.
It would take 9000 solar homes to exceed the output of the nuclear plant. This changes the power equations necessary for that dread black start, as obviously those residences would generate their own power regardless of grid malfunction.
Economically speaking, 9000 solar homes is very cheap compared to building one nuclear reactor, or dealing with the ever growing stockpile of hazardous waste.
900, not 9000. 200 homes @10kw generates slightly less than 25% the output of the nuclear reactor.
@ 129. GerrardOfTitanServer :
That’s simply false. You keep asserting it but it’s not true.
The primary cause of continued Global Overheating (“warming” is too misleadingly mild a word for it) is human Greehnhouse Gas emissions.
So what causes thsoe and why aren’t we reducing them knowing the implications? Well, I think the main source of those acting to spread Climate Denialism and reject action of any sort here are the Fossil fuel lobby, the Murdoch and other reich wing extremists due totheir ideological committment nd vetsed interests.
You think a bunch of relatively powerless people who are arguing for action here are to blame yet ignoring the Indricotherium in the room of Murdoch’s malign media empire and the concerted campaigns of companies like Exxon, BHP, Adani, the coal lobby, etc .. Its absurd and actually seriously suspicious that you blame the people who obviouslty aren’t to blame here and seem to rather completley ignore those that arem, undeniably, at least more to blame even with your single-minded focus on your one partial solution to a problem that will need many forms of action.
consciousness razor
They don’t. Not at all. Solar and wind work decently well with natural gas because natural gas can ramp up and down very quickly, and because the capital costs of a natural gas turbine are small relative to fuel costs. Nuclear is the exact opposite: high capital costs and non-fuel operating costs, and low fuel costs, and further almost no fuel savings when ramping from 100% to 50% output. Solar/wind and nuclear are about as far appart as “complements each other” as you can possibly get.
As I keep trying to say, hydro is extremely limited worldwide. Hydro is at most a few percent of our necessary energy targets, which means it might as well not exist in most places. Geothermal is even more scarce. The only renewable options that can scale to more than a few percent of the total power demand is solar and wind. Everything else is a rounding error.
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Tethys
Look at your own source. It estimates the additional amount of hydro that’s feasible to add. It’s very small. It’s not going to change a 2% number to something significant like a 20% number.
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abbeycadabra
I specifically mentioned that I’m talking in terms of upfront capital costs, and total costs divided by equipment lifetime, in order to avoid the economic tricks that are inherent to LCOE. If you want to understand why I am focusing on upfront capital costs and total costs divided by equipment lifetime instead of LCOE, read this:
https://thoughtscapism.com/2019/11/05/decarbonisation-at-a-discount-lets-not-sell-future-generations-short/.…
lochaber
If the ground was covered in pennies, and if you could only pick up one at a time, it wouldn’t be worth it for most of us to pick up those pennies. Those pennies could be infinitely plentiful, but they might as well not exist. That’s kinda like solar and wind. It’s plentiful, but it’s not worth our time to try to use.
Lots of people here are arguing for significant amounts of non-hydro renewables, and that’s wrong. It’s simply wrong.
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StevoR
Then we’re at an impasse. I can link you to articles and books that describe the history, and it clearly shows that Green opposition to nuclear power is much more significant than climate change denial. I can provide the quotes if that matters. I also have respected and preeminent scientists on my side. On your side, you have special interest groups like Greenpeace which are probably funded by fossil fuel money. Just saying.
Jerry Brown in California was not “relatively powerless”. Together with his Green allies, he oversaw the dismantling of most of its nuclear power plants to replace them with coal and natural gas. Jerry Brown also made bank because his family had large investments in fossil fuels.
Bernie Sanders, bless his soul, is not powerless, and I’m sure he had some noteworthy part to play in shutting Vermont Yankee. Also replaced with fossil fuels.
The German Green energy transition started when Gerhard Schröder and his party allied with the Greens. Germany then started shutting down nuclear power plants and building new coal power plants and new natural gas pipelines. Gerhard Schröder also happens to be earning money from the Russian natural gas company, Gazprom.
People like Amory Lovins and Mark Jacobson are not powerless. I can show you other concerned scientists who say that they used to ignore Jacobson until they realized that he’s having a huge influence over public policy makers. Amory Lovins “Soft Energy Path” is the most important non-German influence to the German energy transition plan according to its authors!
Ralph Nader had a huge part to play in this story as well, demonizing nuclear power. He’s far from powerless.
You just don’t understand how influential these people are, and you also refuse to believe that there is a solution that is not dominated by nuclear power.
PS: And I still voted for Jerry Brown, knowing all of this, because at least he’s not a Republican.
Oh. Because you were measuring them not even in watts, but in arcanely defined dollarydoos. Right. How foolish of me.
Congratulations, that was MUCH more insane than I had guessed. Are you performance art? You must be performance art, these responses don’t even seem human.
abbeycadabra
I don’t know what you’re talking about. I calculated upfront capital costs in USD / watt, taking into account capacity factor. I also calculated (total costs / equipment lifetimes) in USD / watt year. It would be trivial to convert USD / watt year into USD / KWh.
For clarify – I specifically calculated both for an assumed nominal reference of 800 W based on the value given to me by Marcus. I thought I might make the numbers “more real” to scale it to the reference size supplied to me by Marcus instead of “scaled” to “per 1 watt”.
Ok. I’m not an expert even remotely on this topic.
But in reading through the thread there were a couple of things that I do know about that I didn’t see mentioned and that are incredibly relevant:
1. There is a massive bottle-neck in the actual, physical, very very necessary industrial capacity to produce pressure vessels and other components. Last time I read anything on the topic (a decade ago after Fukushima) there was one ore two companies globally that had the capacity to produce pressure vessels, and they were fully booked for the next decade. This may have changed, and yes, after some searching it is clear it has: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/heavy-manufacturing-of-power-plants.aspx — but it’s not that much better.
2. Export of any high tech power system to non-highly industrial countries is fraught. Japan has a hard time exporting proven, reliable cleanish energy technology to other Asian countries because the technology requires operators to have a level of local technological and educational capacity that flat out doesn’t exist on a local scale (I could look up the citations, but it’s a pain in the ass because I know it is from a document I worked on and I have no idea where it was released. There is also the issue of technology transfers to people who really shouldn’t have it which is probably a whole separate topic) .
3. Separating out any individual European country out of the European interconnected power grid is not possible. Any discussion of France vs. Germany is stupid and disingenuous, it should always be France, Germany, and the entire interconnected power grid and supply chain.
What follows is a long explanation of boring stuff:
Germany’s transition to wind and solar was in part made possible because of Norway’s hydro power (direct transmission cable between the two countries) and France’s nuclear. The results of this can be seen in the following: Last year Norway had historically low electricity prices because of local rainfall and heavy wind over Germany. This year, with little wind on the continent and a lack of rainfall locally, prices are sky high in Southern Norway because of the international demand. There is a bottleneck in North-South transmission in Norway that has left local prices in Northern Norway relatively low and stable since the transmissions go through Sweden to reach the rest of Norway or to Russia. It’s all interconnected, and occasionally weirdly so. Don’t ask me why this works the way it does, but it does and has the results it has. Feel free to read the Norwegian daily newspapers, it’s the topic of the moment, if you want more information.
4. Politics, supply chains, random shit, human error, and other things we could talk about.
– Arguments against nuclear power are often driven by fear, but also by simple things like ummm… the power plants are kind of expensive and very all eggs in one basket type projects (see GE Hitachi not building their planned nuclear plants in the UK). See the aforementioned supply chain issues due to manufacturing capacity.
– It takes time to unscare people. It doesn’t help when the corporate actors are complete piles of human garbage (Tepco is welcome to head the list).
– All the nuclear near misses you haven’t heard about. People stirring nuclear fuel in a bucket, mopping it up with paper towels, and other fun stories (those two got a lot of attention after Fukushima since they were localish stories).
– Like mentioned before in someone else’s post: The actual construction of the Fukushima plant is amazing. It withstood a stronger shake than it was designed for (9.2, and the design specs I think called for 9.0, but I may be wrong), but they didn’t quite engineer well enough for a once in a generation+ tsunami. That sucks. If they had, Fukushima would have been a testament to human ingenuity and nuclear power would probably have been more popular than before. Tepco would probably have an undeservedly good reputation – they would still be utter scum, just they wouldn’t have had an actual meltdown on their hands.
– The exact opposite can be said for China’s hydro electric dams, and general dam(n) infrastructure. Pop over to Intransive to read the nice breakdowns if you somehow missed them having to blow up their energy infrastructure to prevent it from self destructing in the face of some excess water.
– Politics and reality. I’m with Marcus here, I really don’t give a shit about what can be done, hypothetically on a 40 year timeline which given the high-end industrial capacity issue – the time we need to build the tools we need to build more of what we need is non-trivial. Cutting back on fossil fuels as hard as we can now is probably a net positive, even in the long run. Forcing the US military onto a 4 day work week for anything involving fossil fuels would probably help too.
Gerrard, f00k right off. It’s perfectly obvious you’re being blatantly dishonest and working to undermine any progress on energy or environmental policy, not advocate any real solution. If you really cared AT ALL about getting more people to accept and use nuclear power, you’d be working WITH other people who also advocate the same, not AGAINST us. And if you were truly confident in your alleged belief that nuclear power would prevail as the only way to go, you’d have no problem at all with supporting wind, solar and hydroelectric as shorter-term solutions to get us off of fossil fuels while we wait for all your nuclear dreams to come true. If your way turns out to be the best, then we’d have no problem dumping all the solar panels and wind turbines, right along with coal and oil, when the time comes, right?
Also, if nothing else, your diversionary bullshit about Chernobyl pretty much gives away your game. You’re obviously just another Retrumplitarian stooge, following Steve Bannon’s plan to “flood the system with shit.” I’m done with you.
Whoa, this ballooned wonderfully!
Just some remarks, as I could read the abundance of posts only obliquely:
@ Marcus: yes, that’s the point about “new designs”, they largely don’t exist. Only a few exceptions like AP1000 (four in China, maybe two in US it they don’t go bellyup again) and those pebble-bed reacs in China again. All the rest, Thorium, Molten Salt and Kitchen Sink are paper and nothin’ else (there’s hope for the Canadian molten salt ones tho). And I don’t think many realize the horrid regulatory burdens for any new reactor, let alone new types. Often it takes more years doing the paperwork than the actual building, so totally forget about “building quickly”.
@ Gerrard: Ha ha ha ha, double no! Don’t even mention LD50 my dear chap. That worries nobody, it’s activity, half life and the danger of incorporation that makes waste, spent fuel and such so dangerous. Remember Litvinenko? It was not the toxicity of Polonium, it was the alpha that cooked him from the inside.
Do consider, I handle spent fuel on a daily basis, and I am VERY grateful for the metre of barium concrete between me and that stuff. If I told my colleagues that “it aint so bad” they’d look at me as if I had bugs on my eyeballs.
Your mention of Bophal, Beirut and what not are irrelevant, those were multi-ton amounts in situations of societal meltdown. If waste and irradiated fuel are more or less contained it’s because hugely robust systems have been built to do the job, infinitely more so than with chemicals. Such systems are always underappreciated, and are remembered only when something goes badly wrong. But we do need them, you wouldn’t like the result if they weren’t there.
This is not an argument. There are no premises here, and there is no evidence of anything.
The paper you linked (as if to refute me) shows what I’m talking about in this image. You can see for yourself that the yellow wave (solar) and purple wave (wind) are out of phase. This happens naturally, and it’s a good thing.
Of course, this has been researched by lots of other scientists for many years. So I guess I should ask you one of your canned rhetorical questions: “Why don’t you listen to the scientists?”
That sounds like a problem for nuclear, and anyway, it’s not a response to anything I was saying about wind and solar.
I wasn’t talking about solar+wind being complementary to nuclear, whatever you think that would even mean.
I will just react to this … thing, that evolved … and I read out of some kind of strange curiosity once:
“Green-ideology is the primary cause of continued global warming.”
Because that made me snort my tea out of my nose.
Also just no. To answer yourr babbeling: That’s more because capitalism and it is much cheaper to have people in poor countries do the work ’cause work in “THE WESTERN CIVILISATION” (think of this as a literal wall of text chiseled from stoneblocks) is expensive and corpos like to maximise profits and how to do that easier than lower production cost. I mean, USA fought wars, yes, wars with a s indication plural, on behalf of US Fruit Corp over labour cost. I wonder if that kind of threat is one reason why certain countries cannot seem to get enivornemtal protection/regulations set in motion … .
As many pointed out, you are a blatingly dishonest, wildly flailing conman and the arguments you bring forth are just run over by your obvious desire to troll. I did not know but i does not surprise you, that you were EL. (I want to say something about rebrang does not work if you are not chaning as an entity, but I have no witty idea).
Keep on taking the stuff they say apart, engaged Commentariat.
Oh, and on the way out:
In the previous thread, after Marcus took you down a notch, you said,that I could communicate by other means with you.
I don’t WANT to communicate with you any further. Why the fuck would I, after you said you’d “throw me in the ocean”? (Don’t bother answering that, I will not respond to you any more.)
My post
was a long winded
Fuck You!
@outis
You clearly don’t know what you are talking about what with you actually working in the industry and all that ;-)
There is a certain amusement to be gained from watching GoTS completely ignore huge swathes of what anyone says, repeatedly “misread” what he does pay attention to, and his utter inability to ever admit that anyone else might know something that he doesn’t. But only because I have decided he is posting in bad faith so I don’t care at all.
@ Jazzlet: well, I do wish he were right!
Much of our work would be easier and less risky.
Just to mention a hair-raising example, there are people going inside hot cells, encased in airtight suits with sensors all over, protected with lead “armor” and even so it’s a nail-biting occurrence every time it’s done. So the cavalier way the dangers of nuclear waste are dismissed sounds really… strange.
To reiterate: nuclear may be one of the tools we can use to get us out of the present disaster, but it’s a bit like juggling knives. Sharp, nasty, poisonous and yes, radioactive.
witm
Good points. Quick comments.
We could build more manufacturing facilities for the pressure vessels. That won’t take decades.
Exporing conventional nuclear to undeveloping and developing countries might have significant problems. I admit I don’t know enough to comment. Then again, I’m talking about building AP-1000s and the like instead of coal power plants. For any place that’s going to build a coal power plant, is it really that much harder to build a AP-1000, especially with outside help? I don’t know. We should at start start building nuclear for developed countries.
Why is it impossible to separate the national grids of different countries? I think this is false, if you care only about France. France’s grid could survive just fine on its own. Germany, on the other hand, cannot, just like you pointed out.
Near-miss nuclear accidents. Yes, but it seems like a double standard. What about the near misses of near hydro dam collapses?
Time to build. You like everyone else thinks it would take 40 years to build lots of nuclear. The evidence does not support that conclusion.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-world-really-could-go-nuclear/https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0124074Quoting the abstract: Analysis of these historical deployments show that if the world built nuclear power at no more than the per capita rate of these exemplar nations during their national expansion, then coal- and gas-fired electricity could be replaced worldwide in less than a decade. Under more conservative projections that take into account probable constraints and uncertainties such as differing relative economic output across regions, current and past unit construction time and costs, future electricity demand growth forecasts and the retiring of existing aging nuclear plants, our modelling estimates that the global share of fossil-fuel-derived electricity could be replaced within 25–34 years. This would allow the world to meet the most stringent greenhouse-gas mitigation targets.
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Raging Bee
It’s not enough to say that you want to build more nuclear power plants. One also needs to take action. As long as people believe that a massive nuclear is not necessary, aka as long as they believe that renewables can do something significant, then they will delay calling for the action that I’m calling for, which is to deplatform anti-nuclear Green parties around the world by not voting for them etc., and in their place to promote pro-nuclear Green parties and agendas.
In other words, I don’t think most people in this thread are my allies.
For example, StevoR in #35 said that he votes Australian Green party, right? That’s about the worst thing that you can possibly do if you care about the climate. Similarly, anyone who supports American candidates who support the Green New Deal when they could support other Democratic candidates in primaries – that’s the worst thing that you could possibly do if you care about the climate.
In other words, again, it’s simply the case that I firmly believe that solar and wind cannot get us off fossil fuels in any significant way, and that every bit of time and money being spent on them is time wasted that we could have spent on nuclear.
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outis
I’d have to run the numbers again to be sure, but I’m pretty sure that if you did one of the worst possible thing with nuclear waste – grind it up into dust and purposefully put it into the atmosphere to evenly spread – then even under LNT, it would still do far less damage than airborne particulate pollution from coal. And LNT is false. And we can do much better than this absurd worst-case scenario. Thus, given that coal is the only real alternative for much of the world, nuclear waste is not a blocking issue.
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consciousness razor
I see. My mistake.
It has been researched by scientists, and one of the best summations of that work is the IPCC reports. In some of the latest reports, all example pathways include lots of nuclear, and most include more nuclear than today. By itself, that might support you more than me. However, if you look at it closely, you quickly see that the anti-nuclear bias is pervasive in that report. By itself, that means that nuclear must be amazing if anti-nuclear bias in the report still led to a report where all scenarios had lots of nuclear and most had more nuclear than today. Second, if you fix the biases in the report, and rerun the models, then nuclear dominates the modeling.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/10/29/top-climate-scientists-warn-governments-of-blatant-anti-nuclear-bias-in-latest-ipcc-climate-report/I do listen to the scientists. I listen to the scientists like James Hansen and others on the IPCC report, and most of them say the same thing: The large majority of scientists say we need lots of nuclear. There’s a few exceptions to the contrary, and whenever I dig into them, they make gross flaws in their paper, such as the work of the huckster Mark Jacobson.
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avalus
Several leading scientists, such as the preeminent Dr James Hansen, and also Dr Kerry Emanuel, disagree. What I’m saying is fringe among popular discussion, but it’s not particularly fringe among the scientists.
GerrardOfTitanServer:
I noticed some more pants-on-fire misinformation.
You don’t learn, do you? I already warned you that well-poisoning rhetoric isn’t going to work, here. Not on this bunch, or on me.
GerrardOfTitanServer:
It’s not enough to say that you want to build more nuclear power plants.
Oh, really? Well, that’s probably the most you’ll get out of anyone on Freethoughtblogs.
One also needs to take action. As long as people believe that a massive nuclear is not necessary, aka as long as they believe that renewables can do something significant, then they will delay calling for the action…
So far, so good. It is true that simply ranting at a bunch of bloggers is not going to do anything. Action is what matters. And, uh, we’re going to do what we do but – as you’ve seen from the discussion here – you’re not getting any traction. In fact, you’re really failing to make a good case for your ideas. I don’t know if you realize that, or not, but the reason I gave you this comment-thread as a platform is so that you’d be dissected and you’d discredit yourself.
But..:
that I’m calling for, which is to deplatform anti-nuclear Green parties around the world by not voting for them etc., and in their place to promote pro-nuclear Green parties and agendas.
Uhhhhhhh…. WAIT WHAT!?
I thought you were a regular idiot but now I see you’re a Special Idiot. Here I/we have been arguing with you and thinking you were advocating for more nukes, which I would say most of us (with some degree of reluctance or other) probably agree with, with caveats, many caveats. But deplatform “Greens”? That’s your agenda?! All I can say is “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAAA That’s not gonna happen.”
For one thing, on this blog you’re already dealing with a variety of levels and manifestations of political cynicism. I believe one member of the commentariat(tm) said they voted on some Green Party ticket or other, but they didn’t even sound particularly pro-green. You’re talking to a bunch of people who are mostly protest voters who feel disempowered by the system (if they are Americans at all) and don’t support any of the “greens” you are ranting about. I even posted some stuff back in 2016 about how unseemly it was to see the Green Party candidate (I forget who it was) attending honorary banquets with Putin. What I’m saying is that your chance that anyone here has any influence at all over the “Greens” is close to zero. And I only say that because negative numbers aren’t applicable.
We’re not a bunch to “deplatform” anybody. If you’d managed to be more convincing (your style of argumentation is a “shit show”; I don’t know if you noticed this is an “Argument Clinic” thread) maybe if any of the commentariat(tm) donate to a Green Party, they’ll donate to BLM or BDS, instead, but it won’t be because of, or for, you.
In other words, I don’t think most people in this thread are my allies.
Not a one. And you’re incredibly unconvincing. Obviously, I can’t speak for the entire commentariat(tm) but you appear to have convinced no one to your agenda.
I’m not just saying this to be a dick, but you are pretty annoying, so let me give you some advice: your message will carry better if you go preach it on some dark web blogosphere sites, where it’s easy to drum up irrational hatred of ${label} or other. Your amateur propagandist routine might work better, there – this forum is too high a percentage of hard-bitten cynics.
It’s looking more and more like Raging Bee was right, except I doubt very much that you’re a republican provocateur; I’m more inclined to think you’re just a random blog fringe-believer. *Yawn* Another one.
Really, you’re wasting your time here and your talents would be better invested elsewhere.
Marcus
Re poisoning the well. You don’t know what that means. An example of poisoning the well is “before you listen to my opinion about X, know that he’s been to jail and is an adulterer”. Poisoning the well is a kind of ad hom, an attack of the person and not the argument. What you cited is not attacking the person. It’s attacking the argument. I’m describing several of the arguments here as pants-on-lie wrong. It’s just a colorful way of saying “very wrong”. It is no way an ad hom or “poisoning the well”. It’s a direct attack on the argument and in no possible way an attack on the person. (By contrast, my “fixation” on the Greens might reasonably be interpreted as poisoning the well, but that only works if most people already accept that Greens are an evil in the world, which they don’t here.)
That one commentariat person said he lived in Australia and votes for Australia Greens and indicated that he’s a member, suggesting some kind of active member of some sort or another, of the Australian Green party. That is far more than protest voting.
On that, I agree. It’s most unfortunate that practically everyone here believes the same lies which is the direct cause of climate change.
Pants-on-lie
A wonderful Fruedian slip. For clarity, I don’t think anyone here is lying, but I do think many of the leaders and “scholars” of the Green NGOs are out and out liars.
This is an asinine argument. This argument could be deployed against any and all possible argument in favor of changing anything in the world. Marcus, you’re better than this. Or maybe it’s just you’re nihilism (selectively) coming out concerning the “marketplace of ideas” and democracy.
See also:
Quoting leading climate scientist Dr. Kerry Emanuel:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/10/29/top-climate-scientists-warn-governments-of-blatant-anti-nuclear-bias-in-latest-ipcc-climate-report/Quoting preeminent climate scientist Dr. James Hansen:
https://youtu.be/KnN328eD-sA?t=2041https://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/jim-hansen-presses-the-climate-case-for-nuclear-energy/http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110729_BabyLauren.pdfSee also: Direct quotes calling for much more nuclear and saying that renewables are woefully insufficient.
Quoting leading climate scientist Dr. Ken Caldeira:
https://youtu.be/KnN328eD-sA?t=121https://youtu.be/KnN328eD-sA?t=3109Quoting leading climate scientist Dr. Kerry Emanuel:
https://youtu.be/KnN328eD-sA?t=251https://youtu.be/KnN328eD-sA?t=1297https://youtu.be/KnN328eD-sA?t=1956I’m sure there is an anti nuclear bias, just as there is an anti-coal bias and an anti-tar sands bias, and an anti fracking bias.
This is not a drawback, As the fossil fuel mining companies have a long history of polluting the environment for profit.
Since so much of our hydropower infrastructure is nearing the end of its intended lifespan, including power retrofits on dams that require major renovation regardless of their hydropower output is a highly cost effective method to quickly increase both generating capacity and hydro-power storage.
Pragmatically speaking it’s simply not an option to go nuclear fast enough to replace the aging coal plants.
But please, go ahead, and try to square the circle in your head about how I’m just saying much the same thing that these leading climate scientists are saying, including the preeminent Dr James Hansen who was basically the first to warn the public about this in those US congressional hearings.
As I said, you can listen to the scientists, or you can listen to special interest groups like Greenpeace who are probably funded by fossil fuel money. The choice is yours.
Yes it is. Let me link to the paper again.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-world-really-could-go-nuclear/https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0124074Quoting the abstract:
I’m pretty sure that’s fast enough for most it.
And re the anti-nuclear bias, it’s a special undue bias against nuclear that’s specific to nuclear. Your characterization is very incorrect. Let me quote some more from that other link from another scientist.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/10/29/top-climate-scientists-warn-governments-of-blatant-anti-nuclear-bias-in-latest-ipcc-climate-report/Embedded hyperlinks in the original.
An example of poisoning the well is “before you listen to my opinion about X, know that he’s been to jail and is an adulterer”
No, that’s an example of the genetic fallacy.
An example of poisoning the well would be, “Before you read any more tedious arguments in this thread, you should make sure you have some No-Doz or a big slug of caffeine, first.”
In that example, I’m doing what Sam Harris often does, which is a sort of eye-rolling sneer that completely lacks any content but attempts to influence the reader by conditioning them to the idea that the thread is boring.
I had a philosophy teacher, once, whose idea of bolstering an argument was well-poisoning, as in, “surely any rational person would agree ${blah}” forcing anyone who wished to disagree into the position of not being rational, etc.
I’m describing several of the arguments here as pants-on-lie wrong. It’s just a colorful way of saying “very wrong”.
Try being less descriptive or keep the context closer to mind, if you want it to work better, i.e.: “My opponent is lying about ${this} because the facts are that ${that} is true and here is evidence.
“Surely any rational person” is talking about the person. I didn’t talk about the person. When I said “pants-on-fire misinformation”, I was talking about the argument. That’s not fallacious or unreasonable. It was a characterization of my opponent’s argument as without merit. If that’s not allowed, then wtf?
PS:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well
What part of *moratorium* is giving you trouble Gerry? The planning and licensing process for large civil projects takes years, even if there was 100% support and public approval to build new nuclear.
We can’t wait years, and have gone ahead building multiple small carbon free projects to the point that wind and solar are now cheaper than coal or nuclear.
GerrardOfTitanServer:
If that’s not allowed, then wtf?
I didn’t say it’s not allowed. I said it’s sloppy workmanship. You be you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well
Interesting. Perhaps the meaning has changed since I was a kid. (shrug)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy is closer to what I think you are talking about. But, whatever, maybe I could just call what you are doing, “posturing” or “rhetorical flourishes.”
Here is an example from the real world, not HIS Marxist nuclear-powered workers fantasy-island bullshit (don’t forget that HIS real motivation is a glorious proletariat).
The context is the company at which I work (I added this because context is not HIS strong point).
We have mediocre weather here on the East coast of Australia presently – such as afternoon thunderstorms bad enough to cause grid outages. The outages are due to trees being ripped from the ground by the winds, thereby pulling overhead high-voltage (11kV) feeders down.
We have a 9.9kW PV array on the roof.
The building is conected by a 3-ø supply, so the PV inverter is a 3-ø hybrid model (with EPS in case the grid fails) and a 9.6kWh battery stack to store some of our excess energy.
On Friday last week, even with an afternoon thunderstorm and a 1.5hr grid outage between 14:25 and 16:00, our purchased energy for that 24hr period was a measly 0.1kWh. Yes, we purchased a whole 100Wh from the grid in a 24hr period!
We run 8 PCs, 7 of which have dual monitors. Comms cabinet with Panasonic telephone system, one 24-port HP switch plus one 8-port D-Link poe switch, internet router, fibre NTD. You know, the normal stuff in an office.
4 small split-cycle air-conditioners all running all day (because I know about the battery capabilities I turned two of the air-con units off when the grid failed, just in case).
Office lighting – all high-efficiency LED.
Warehouse lighting.
Electric hot water (125L) – timed to heat only between 11:00 and 13:00, though this is not on backup, but hey, it is an office, so the only need for hot water is to wash some dishes.
When the grid failed at 14:25 the businesses next door had to shut up shop, and after an hour of no power decided to start their weekend a little early. We stayed open, running on battery backup.
In fact, for the month of September, we purchased a grand total of 8.9kWh from the grid, total. That is less than AU$3 worth of power at commercial rates, for the whole month! And we exported over 1200kWh of energy into the grid in September, which our non-solar endowed neighbours all used through the magic of distributed electricity generation (on this side of the local transformer). I think that this idea of distributed generation is HIS biggest problem (you cannot implement a central committee when the things you want to seize cannot be centrally controlled).
What this means is that during a covid lockdown, our business was resilient enough to weather the storm and stay profitable because one of the ongoing costs of business basically disappeared from our expenditures. This is what we can do right now, to keep HIS precious workers working.
It is how my boss rolls. Use the good times to prepare for the lean times. He has been in this business long enough to know that lean times will keep coming around. He doesn’t drive a fucking Lamborghini.
Anyone who says renewables are useless – our friendly nay-sayer here is a prime example – is straight-out lying. More businesses in Australia are turning to these options because our inept right-wing government cannot pull their heads our of their arses long enough to see that the real world is moving on from the “gas-led [covid] recovery” that they keep harping on about.
And I still dont know where to buy a small fission reactor to replace our 9.9kW PV system? Does anybody else know where we can get our hands on one? Can we get one for AU$27K? I am sure if they were AVAILABLE NOW, INEXPENSIVE, AND SAFE, many businesses would adopt them.
What’s that you say? They only exist in an internet areshole’s imaginary Marxist nuclear-powered workers paradise?
They are, at this point in time, irrelevant. Der!
To quote Windsor Davies, “Oh dear, how sad, never mind”.
The complete phrase is ‘Liar, Liar, pants on fire.’ , which is a juvenile way to call someone a liar, clearly.
Claiming that sources are lying for using the phrase, ‘Sometimes it seems as if the wind never stops blowing on the plains.’ is pointless.
Moving goalposts and repeatedly ignoring statistics that directly contradict your arguments is not a compelling example of truthfulness.
The cost benefit analysis shows that while nuclear can provide many gigawatts without generating carbon, it does generate some equally serious radiation problems and is very expensive to build and operate.
Wind may be an intermittent source, but has the huge advantage of not creating hazardous waste or carbon. If it blows up, you don’t need to evacuate the area or declare a public emergency. One of the power plants in my first source converted its office buildings to wind power. Since they don’t work at night, the intermittent wind matches the office power use, and any extra flows into the grid.
I still see battery storage as the major technical barrier to cheap wind and solar providing enough power for modern society in my region. We have a lot of untapped potential for hydro too. If nothing else, I’ve found it pretty enlightening to poke around the internet and check on the various local projects. If I had a spare 10,000 I would get solar installed on my garage roof immediately. It would eliminate my electric bill, and possibly my heating costs too.
tuatara
With or without net-metering? Is that 0.1 KWh net? Because if it’s net, then you’re still missing the whole point of my rants, which I’m loathe to repeat again.
…
Marcus
Ok. I found another non-ally. Look at what Tethys just said:
This is not an ally to nuclear power. This is not someone in favor of building more nuclear power. They explicitly compared the harms of climate change to the harms of nuclear waste and nuclear power. This is the person that I’m trying to reach and convince (and failing to do so). Nuclear waste is magnitudes less harmful and dangerous than climate change et al, and nuclear waste is magnitudes less harmful than simple airborne particulate pollution from coal, but there is this persistent myth that nuclear waste is some magically dangerously substance which is present in many posters here, even if it’s not true for you.
Also, I don’t know if you want me to comment on the other thread
https://freethoughtblogs.com/stderr/2021/10/24/screwing-the-pooch/
so I’m do it here.
All new nuclear in the west is expensive today for a few simple reasons. Many of the reactors are first of a kind designs. You should expect cost overruns from first of a kind designs. Learning curve cost reductions come from building the same thing over and over again. Also, the nuclear reactors are being built by people who have never built a nuclear reactor before. They’re bound to make mistakes. Learning curve cost reductions come from skilled labor building the same thing over and over again. This is perhaps the biggest reason why nuclear is so expensive today in the West compared to the historical cost in France, and contemporary costs in other places like South Korea.
As someone in the other thread said, France used to do it much cheaper.
However, to contradict another person in the other thread, the reason for the extremely high costs today is not the additional safety. Rather, it’s the reasons that I just gave (plus a smaller but significant bit of regulatory and legal obstructionism from anti-nuclear activists).
PS: Even with all of those cost overruns and delays, the nuclear that you’re citing is still cheaper than solar + batteries + transmission. Just saying. Don’t compare LCOE which is fundamentally dishonest. Instead, compare upfront capital costs for equivalent (total grid) solutions, and compare the yearly recurring costs aka total costs divided by equipment lifetimes. On both metrics, nuclear comes out as significantly cheaper, even for these outlier nuclear power plants today.
…
PS:
Tethys
Wind creates more hazardous waste than nuclear. For an introduction to one of the kinds of waste, see:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-on-earthBut I guess as long as the pollution is restricted to China and not in your home country, it’s ok, right? /s
On this, I completely agree.
PPS:
I would think that we could speed that process along because the alternative is, you know, runaway climate change, plus the pointless death of millions of people per year from mundane air pollution.
Look. This is the last time I ever communicate with you directly. I dont like you. You will rant no matter what I say because I will always be wrong in your mind. I dont care. You can fuck off.
But here you go.
This is the data from a private consumption meter not the utility “net” meter.
On that day;
Purchased energy = 0.1kWh
Feed in = 32.1kWh
Net = -32kWh
Enough export to power the small shop next door (wholesale kitchen supplies so lights and 2 x PCs, the electrician business upstairs above them, the small cabinetry showroom next to that andbtheir workshop – not manufacturing, just a showroom out front and assembly and storage so maybe 4 PCs and lighting and some light power tool use, and a small copier shop next to them. 5 small businesses in one small building. We are the only tenant with PV.
Because we all share a supply mains connection, 3-phase 35mm2 Cu per phase 17m to the connection point, our excess energy goes straight to these businesses (current goes to load via the path of least resistance – that is how electricity flows, you know) via the shared meter box before it heads out to the street then to the buildings around us if there is anything left.
That is how it works.
So net for that day is -32kWh at whatever the company earns as a feed in tariff.
This is what I do for a living. I design and sell solar PV systems – not hardware because I am not educated in the field of electrical engineering – but analysing load profiles and matching array sizes to needs.
I understand the differences between power and energy, which a lot of people have no idea about. I will give you the credit of knowing the difference.
Unlike you I work in the real world, not an imagined one.
Talking of pants-on-fire misinformation: GOTS You keep claiming that Greenpeace are funded by the fossil fuel industry. It would take you half a second on google to find out that this is not true; Greenpeace are well-known for refusing corporate donations.
Let me rephrase what I said because I know you will pick it apart.
Our net for that day was -32kWh, which was enough to cover our neighbours “net” needs, but probably not their actual instantaneous load.
Our load is covered easily.
But there is plenty of PV in the street, so probably our area on most days is energy self sufficient. There is only one heavy manufacturer nearby but they have their own 1000kVA transformer.
I hope that clears it up.
Tuatara
So, you have a lot of batteries then? Calculate the cost of those batteries and how many times you’ll have to replace them in a 60 year period, and Hinkley C and Vogtle will look positively cheap.
…
Greenpeace are well known for hiding their funding sources. Same for most Green NGOs. Unlike most of the pro-nuclear advocates that I know of which keep open books.
For some other Green NGOs, like NRDC, we have some evidence of some significant investments in fossil fuels.
Related: We know that fossil fuel money, a grant from Robert Anderson, was used to start the first anti-nuclear NGO, Friends Of The Earth.
https://atomicinsights.com/smoking-gun-robert-anderson/Similar, Greenpeace claims to avoid corporate donations, but they accept some foundation donations. Such foundations are regularly used as financial cover and tricks for fossil fuel lobbying (and tax avoidance). Because they don’t publish their actual sources of funding, we can just guess based on the circumstantial evidence that we have, such as this:
https://atomicinsights.com/shell-executives-should-give-themselves-permission-to-discuss-clean-nuclear-energy/So, Greenpeace is more than happy to occasionally (probably frequently) share a stage with Shell, but they would rather be caught dead than share a stage with nuclear advocates. Just saying.
Gerrard: how do we know YOU’RE not secretly paid by the fossil-fuel lobby? You’re certainly doing their bidding: mindlessly attacking every possible competitor to fossil fuels except nuclear power, then just as mindlessly attacking other advocates of sensible nuclear energy policy. You PRETEND to oppose fossil fuels, but you’ve literally attacked every reasonable alternative energy policy that offers any real-world alternative to fossil fuels. So whose interests do your unhinged hateful rants really serve? No one’s except for fossil fuels.
So fuck off, COINTELPRO troll.
And
https://atomicinsights.com/smoking-gun-sierra-club-admits-donations-targeting-a-natural-gas-competitor/
I offered to Marcus, and I’ll offer to you. I’ll release years of my tax records, past and current, us federal and state, and go on live video chat and show my driver’s license and passport. That good enough for you?
I wish Greenpeace had the same decency that I have and that most / all pro nuclear advocacy groups do.
Raging Bee.
Yea,h I’ve done everything I could to support fossil fuels, you know, except say that there should be a large yearly-increasing greenhouse gas emissions tax (specifically Hansen’s fee and dividend approach), plus a concerted worldwide effort to replace coal and natural gas as soon as possible with nuclear, and then electricity transport as much as possible with nuclear, and try for stuff like synthetic hydrocarbon fuels with nuclear electricity and heat and atmospheric co2 for other transport, and use nuclear electricity and heat for other industrial processes that now use coal and Nat gas.
None of that would prove you’re not being paid by the fossil-fuels lobby. Nor would it disprove the obvious truth of who your unhinged hateful rhetoric really serves (which, I notice, you haven’t disputed).
Also Marcus, it’s necessary to keep in mind that fuel is a commodity, but electricity is not. It’s a service. Back when electricity came from dispatchable fuel-based sources, it was easy to think of electricity and energy as a commodity, but now with increasing fuel-less electricity sources, it’s important to stress that electricity is not a commodity. A factory cannot stock up on electricity like a coal power plant can stock up on fuel. That factory depends on continuous delivery of electricity every millisecond to stay in operation. Solar and wind being without fuel is in some ways an advantage, but it’s also a serious disadvantage because it makes solar and wind not dispatchable, and means that we can no longer think about electricity as being synonymous with fuel and thus being a commodity.
Part of your problem is that you’re still thinking of electricity as a commodity instead of a service where 24-7 continuous delivery is an integral indispensable part of the service.
Raging Bee
Why would I dispute something which j obviously think is false? Nuclear is the only way to get rid of fossil fuels. Green NGOs are the allies of fossil fuels because renewables do not threaten their business and especially because they regularly attack the only competition. The real story is even more complicated if you want to get into some basics of the commodity market and the strategies of NGOs and how they align with fossil fuel people.
And ok. So my license, passport, paystubs from my software company, and my tax returns, and bank account history, etc, wouldn’t prove that I’m not being paid for by fossil fuel money. I guess you’re right in some abstract pedantic sense, but gods damn you have some rather high standard of evidence in this regard.
“A concerted worldwide effort to replace coal and natural gas as soon as possible with nuclear [and absolutely nothing else]” + “very little real progress on the ground for nuclear” = “no real alternatives to fossil fuels in the foreseeable future.” So yeah, that definitely serves the fossil-fuel industry’s interests, and no one else’s, no matter what taxes you advocate (which won’t improve anything if we’re not allowing sufficient alternatives, remember?).
Is there anything that I could supply which would satisfy your demand for evidence? Contact information for family and friends?
Raging Bee.
Again, the reasoning is very simple. Nuclear is being blocked by political problems based largely on falsehoods and also on some fringe Luddite ideology. (Fringe in mainstream politics, but pretty common in environmental circles.) By contrast, renewables don’t work for unavoidable physical issues that no amount of politics can change (or they depend on the impossible political requirement of making everyone poor). This, that’s why I think nuclear is the only way forward. It’s easier to change opinion based on falsehoods and fringe Luddite beliefs than it is to change the laws of physics or conjure up some miracle technological breakthrough (which much of the mainstream environmental movement would be opposed to anyway).
Again, the fact that you’re full of shit is very simple, and obvious. Nuclear power projects aren’t working nearly as well as they need to, and wind and solar projects are working far better than you say they do. MANY commenters, far more knowledgeable of such things than myself, have pointed this out here, and many others have known all this for a fact for many years and counting. Your arguments have been refuted, and your dishonesty and inexcusable blind hatred have been exposed for all to see. To adapt a quote from one of the worst TV shows ever: We know that you know that we know that you’re lying.
Oh, and calling people who advocate and adopt new technologies “Luddites” is even sillier than saying the US Constitution comes from the Bible. Fuck off to bed.
Gots
Lies cause global warming? Im thinking it was caused by all the carbon in the atmosphere from decades of burning fossil fuels.
I have not changed my opinion because Gerard is not making an honest argument.
One of his false claims is that energy demand can only increase. Since my personal electrical use has decreased every year by installing LED lighting and appliances that use far less electricity, it’s pretty easy to dismiss the claim.
Simply unplugging things if they aren’t in use saves a surprising amount of electricity.
Nuclear power is inherently dangerous. No amount of endless blather is going to change radioactive power into a process that doesn’t rip atoms apart. This is bad for living creatures and their habitat, and we don’t have any way to fix the results of a nuclear accident. Those are huge drawbacks, which you don’t get to handwave away. Claiming it’s never caused any harm is asinine.
Solving battery storage seems far simpler, and luckily I happen to live in a place that has a very windy region, can generate enough solar to power an average household, and we have a lot of untapped hydro capability.
I’ve spent many hours of my life inspecting new construction. Finding their workers crap shoved in vents, drains, and in walls because they are damn lazy pigs doesn’t inspire confidence that building a nuclear plant would not have the same human issue.
Gerrar’ds gone full-on conspiracy theory now, and I still don’t understand why he won’t ever even do anyone the courtesy of using clickable links.
STOP PUTTING YOUR URLS IN <CODE> BLOCKS, YOU LONE GUNMAN!
He also can’t comprehend that a home solar system does not need batteries. You can add one if you live where power outages are common, but they can simply be connected to the existing grid.
Many small producers on a decentralized network reduces transmission costs and adds resilience to the grid.
Tethys@198.
That is the problem right there.
He is a Marxist.
The workers must reclaim the means of production , except the production of energy, evidently. Energy production needs to be centrally managed so that the committee members (including him of course) can live the high life. How else can you dream up a glorious imaginary paradise unless you dont have to work for a living.
Intellectualist bullshit. He obviously doesnt read. He missed the bit I said about our battery storage.
One wonders if he reads his own rants…..
Again, force of habit to avoid the automatic spam detector.
…
Raging Bee
Again, we have convincing direct evidence that the first anti-nuclear group, Friends Of The Earth, was started with fossil fuel money. We also know that other Green NGOs today benefit from fossil fuels via large investments in fossil fuels, such as NRDC. It’s not a conspiracy theory. Thinking that I’m a paid shill in spite of how I’ve offered to share all of my financial documents with you plus more – that’s a conspiracy theory. It’s also classic ad hom.
(Hey Marcus, are you going to call out actual ad hom and poisoning the well?)
…
tuatara
I think that workers should control the means of production to the best extent possible. That’s why I support extremely high progressive income taxes (90%+ on billionaires), inheritance taxes (99%+ on billionaires), and comparatively high total asset taxes (like property taxes, but include all assets, e.g. stocks). I also support election reform for the expressed purpose of reducing the influence of money in elections. I also support ways to ban lobbying on elected officials.
Others here think that it’s feasible to decentralize the means of production. That is never what Marxism was about. Marx wasn’t so foolish as to imagine that this could happen. Your call to decentralize the means of production is resulting in burning down the means of production. It’s not necessary to support burning down the means of production in order to like and value Marxist critiques of capitalism e.g. be a Marxist.
Note for others: tuatara is an example of those Green ludittes that I’m talking about. tuatara has made it clear that they think that all possible technological fixes to climate change are undesirable. In other words, the discovery of a clean, cheap, safe, abundant energy source would be a bad thing. And I quote:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2021/10/05/the-nobel-acknowledges-global-warming-again/
This kind of person is my enemy and the enemy of everyone on Earth. They’re a raging hypocrite for living a life of comfort because of the advantages of cheap energy, and they’re a colonialist for working to denying those same benefits to the poor non-white parts of the world.
The guy who led off by saying “greens” should be thrown in an ocean, and blamed environmental activists for environmental disasters, is whining about “actual ad hom and poisoning the well?” Is Gerrard even grown-up enough to be called a hypocrite?
Oh Gerry, do shut-up with declaring people your enemy. (Or luddites)
You have been given a thread to make your case, and failed to prove at great length that nuclear is the only possible way to go carbon free.
Renewables = economically viable.
Coal = global warming
Hydro = can double with retrofits to existing infrastructure. Not cheap but doable within ten years.
Natural gas = better than coal but still fossil fuel
Nuclear = moratorium + costly
Your call to decentralize the means of production is resulting in burning down the means of production.
Which means of production are being “burned down,” exactly?
tuatara has made it clear that they think that all possible technological fixes to climate change are undesirable.
Quote tuatara saying anything even remotely like that, or admit you’re full of shit. That certainly wasn’t what your quote of them said.
Hahahaha.
Hands up all those here who think I am the enemy of humanity in this now pointless discussion (generous use of the word discussion I know).
GoTS @ 148 in response to StevoR
Proof right there that he doesn’t read his own rants.
Fuck off now. You are not worth another moment of our time.
Marcus can smote you anytime. He has my blessing.
Wait, I thought _I_ was the enemy of humanity! Damn, now I’m jealous…
Raging Bee
Again, obvious hypberbole. No reasonable person would read that as a call to literal mass murder. Pretending that this was anything but humorous exaggeration is a farce.
(Centralized) energy production, upon which our society is based. Renewables cannot power our society, and some renewable advocates like tuatara are working to tear down all other energy sources, which is tantamount to tearing down our society, which is the real intent of the designers of the American Green New Deal anyway and most other plans like it.
Yes, it is. “Our economic system cannot be trusted to not misuse it [abundant cheap energy].” It doesn’t get any clearer than that. In context, it’s quite explicitly clear. Maybe you should learn to read.
AFAIK, you never said that clean, cheap, abundant, safe energy would be a bad thing. However, please feel free to correct the record if I got you wrong.
@129 GOTS
So, by your own argument you are also responsible for the coming global warming catastrophe, since you are arguing against solar/wind, which you say will result in regular blackouts, which you say will make nuclear power politically acceptable and usher in this 100% golden nuclear age.
Just for the record, I don’t ever consider comments that advocate for murdering people you disagree with as “ humorous exaggeration “.
Authoritarianism is not funny.
xohjoh2n
Wait, what?
“you are also responsible for the coming global warming catastrophe”
No.
“you are arguing against solar/wind”
Yes
“which you say will result in regular blackouts”
Yes, and already has.
“which you say will make nuclear power politically acceptable and usher in this 100% golden nuclear age.”
Probably, yes.
I’m not endorsing this as my plan A. It’s more like my plan B. My plan A is to fix the problem with greenhouse gas emission taxes, nuclear, electrification of transport, geoengineering via negative emissions technologies, and more, before we get to widespread frequent blackouts.
Adding the means of production to every house is currently the cheapest method of increasing supply. They are already connected to the grid, and there are numerous such installations providing clean power that still operate during power outages.
Except it’s not. It’s like 5x or 10x more expensive than centralized power production. There’s a reason that around the world, electricity prices go up in a country or region as they add more solar and wind. I’ve explained the reasons above in great detail.
Tethys
Come on. Seriously? I didn’t say “shoot them all” or “hang them” or “lock them up”. I said something like “throw them overboard”, which is a common non-murder phrase which means “exclude from the group / exclude from discussion”. This is really not reasonable at all IMO.
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/thrown+overboard
> 3. throw overboard : to reject or abandon
It is truly remarkable how Gerald is completely incapable of acknowledging their errors.
But of course I’m merely a liar and ignorant as a creationist, and can only aspire to become an enemy of the people.
Tethys
I’ve apologized above where I see that I’ve made errors. AFAIK, I also never called you specifically a liar. As ignorant as a creationist? Yes. But not a liar. And yes, I think that your political ideology is the most dangerous political ideology currently facing humanity because of the severity and immediacy of climate change.
Again, obvious hypberbole. No reasonable person would read that as a call to literal mass murder. Pretending that this was anything but humorous exaggeration is a farce.
Isn’t that what every Rash Lamebrain wannabee says when they’re called out for their hateful stupidity? “Geez, I was just kidding! Where’s your sense of humor?!”
If you were being serious, then you’re a bad joke. If you were kidding, your jokes aren’t funny. Either way, fuck off with the rest of your fellow Retrumplitarian hatemongers who can’t own their own words.
BTW, it’s true that I never said that clean, cheap, abundant, safe energy would be a bad thing. Neither did tuatara. They merely said that decentralized energy sources would be a good thing to counter the power of a big centralized provider controlling everyone’s supply of necessary energy. That’s not the same thing as saying “clean, cheap, abundant, safe energy would be a bad thing.” Perhaps you’re the one who should learn to read. (Is English not your first language?)
Raging Bee
Re colorful metaphors. It’s clear that I erred. I failed to clearly communicate. I’ll have to do better next time.
Ok. I see where you’re coming from now. A better phrasing would be “clean, cheap, abundant, safe, centralized energy production under anything but a socialist utopia economic and governance system would be a bad thing”. Obviously, I still consider this to be highly problematic, because decentralized energy production is impossible while maintaining our industrial society, and because I believe socialist utopias are utopias in the original etymological sense of the word “utopia”: “no place / nowhere”.
I am a Marxist in the sense that I subscribe to many of the Marxist critiques and analyses of capitalism, but I am not a Marxist in the sense that I promote anarchism or communism or other socialist utopias. Any fix that we find must be in the context of a mixed economic system such as we have now, but preferably (much) closer to the socialist bent, e.g. guaranteed minimum income schemes plus progressive taxation schemes for the purpose of wealth redistribution for the purpose of greatly reducing the wealth gap in our society.
I don’t see any remotely plausible alternative structure of the economy. I’m open for discussions of some alternative, but given I’ve spent a lot of time reading on this topic, I don’t have any hope that someone will give me a real alternative.
Thus, my working assumptions are that energy supply must be centralized, and that some significant elements of capitalism are unavoidable, and thus I understand the clear consequence of what tuatara says to be that clean, cheap, abundant, safe energy would be a bad thing.
Also, I don’t see how decentralization would make it any better. Raging Bee, I think you misunderstand the critique, assuming we take the critique at face value. tuatara is warning about the dangers of rich people using excess energy to do more harm to the environment. Any clean, cheap, abundant, safe energy supply that can be decentralized would be just as vulnerable to abuse by rich capitalists compared to clean, cheap, abundant, safe energy supplies which only function when centralized. Thus, talking about centralization vs decentralization is IMO missing the entire point of tuatara’s concerns. Rather, their concern is that we must first radically restructure society to some sort of non-capitalist economy before it would be non-harmful to discover clean, cheap, abundant, safe energy – decentralizable or not.
PS: This is the same complaint which Amory Lovins makes, which consciousness razor, KG, and tuatara all seem to identify with. Consciousness razor explicitly liking the idea – or at least explicitly not-disliking the idea.
https://www.motherearthnews.com/renewable-energy/amory-lovins-energy-analyst-zmaz77ndzgoe
Hmm, I’m not going to bother refuting the idea that people installing their own solar power is more expensive than the government using their tax dollars to build one nuclear plant so they can pay a utility for providing the same service.
So what?! Carbon free and no hazardous waste is exactly what we need. You don’t get to elide the radioactive waste problem! 2.5 million a year for 20 years of storing the lethal trash is pretty damn expensive and generates zero new capacity.
The Amish don’t even use the damn grid, yet they certainly have generators. They just don’t waste electricity on non essentials.
Tethys
Sigh. Solar and wind make electricity more expensive in basically every country and region that adds more of them, and I explained the reasons in detail above. Solar has lots of hazardous waste. Solar cells are typically classified formally as “hazardous waste”. The so-called nuclear waste problem has several easy, cheap, and safe solutions, but none of which are recognized by anti-nuclear campaigners because they misunderstand or lie about the scale of the dangers involved; see my previous sources about the real scale of the danger of nuclear waste disposal, and especially the ThorCon document, and the links on the several billion year old natural nuclear reactor in Oklo, Gabon. It’s not particularly lethal or dangerous when put into a proper context. You’re just freaking out based on wildly exaggerated estimation of the dangers of nuclear waste.
Are you praising the use of fossil fuel generators? Seriously? Wtf?
Also, it seems like you’re praising the Amish way of life. One reasonable way to read what you’re saying is that it would be a good thing if we all de-industrialized like the Amish. Do you think that? Or am I reading too far into what you said?
…because decentralized energy production is impossible while maintaining our industrial society…
Utter bullshit; “our industrial society” may require SOME centralized sources of energy, for SOME purposes, but there’s no need for ALL of our energy needs to come from any centralized sources. What our society needs is what the available technology can provide, and you’ve consistently underestimated and ignored how our technology has advanced, and what it’s been able to provide, since you lot first learned to equate big centralized everything with “progress.” You have no clue what you’re talking about.
Here Tethys. Tell me what the worst case scenario is for nuclear waste. How many people do you think will die? How many people do you think will be harmed? How much land will be rendered uninhabitable for a year or more?
For practically all of the foreseeable worst case scenarios involved spent nuclear fuel and other nuclear waste, the answers are: zero deaths, zero people injured, and near zero land contaminated to the extent that it would be uninhabitable for a year or more.
I just don’t see any plausible scenario that could actually do any damage. It’s just not there.
Unlike nuclear reactor accidents which do have the potential for impact on surrounding people and the environment.
Raging Bee
I’ve read the papers that have done the math. I’ve cited the sources, and I’ve cited the experts. It looks like you’re just flailing around in support of an indefensible dogma.
The only decentralized energy production of note is solar and wind. On a grid, solar and wind add little to no value, and especially beyond roughly 30% of the grid, they start adding negative value. Off-grid, solar and wind have some small value over no electricity, but it’s very small compared to “real” electricity, to borrow the term from the Indian villages from my source above. The Indian villagers were protesting because they were given “fake” electricity by a microgrid supplied by Greenpeace. They protested, saying that they wanted “real” electricity, e.g. a grid connection to coal power plants.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-trumps-solar-in-india/
The fundamental problem is that most people look at a small section of the problem under current regulatory feed-in tariff rules, and they extrapolate this to the whole system. They don’t consider, and in this thread actively refuse to learn about, all of the interesting complications that arise when you try to scale “one house on the grid” to “the whole grid”. What works in the context of a single house with a grid connection to a coal power plant doesn’t work to replace all coal and natural gas on the grid. I’ve explained the reasons why, and I’ve cited the papers, and I’ve cited the experts who say the same thing. I don’t know what more I can do when all you have to respond with is “nuh uh!”.
@33. GerrardOfTitanServer : “Da fuck. I think I’ll pass.” on commenting on this thread..
@148 GOTS :
There are books that rate Green opposition to nuclear as more significant than Climate Change Denial?
Okay, which ones by who then?
So you think the Fossil fuel lobby is paying people to argue and oppose the Fossil fuel lobby? Greenpeace which I’m not a member of regularly takes action opposing the fossil fuel industry and calling for Climate action.
The nuclear industry, well, it touts itself as the One and Only solution to the problem – or at least some of its advocates do – but really doesn’t seem otherwise to do much to me in the way of otherwise advocating and raising awareness of Climate science and fighting Denialism.
Okay so there are a few people cited here who have varying degrees of some influence. Known mainly for things other than anti-nuclear stances and more progressive causes generally but still. Relative to Murdoch and the Fossil Fool lobby? You seriously think say, Ralph Nader has more political influence than Rupert Murdoch who has run decades of Denialist propaganada and far reich wing columinists mocking and lying about the science and in some cases actively fueling (ha) campaigns of outright intimidation including sending death threats to Climate Scientists.
See :
https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/climate/13591490
& https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WvasALL-hw among other places.
You think the Fossil Fuel lobby and Murdoch’s media empire which has often decided or swayed elections might be, say, at least equal in blame to people who actually want action on Climate but dislike and okay argue against your One True Solution, the Holy Nukes? You won’t condemn them just the Greens for everything here?
Erm, I think you vastly overstate the influence of the Greens and progressives here.
I think Nader for that helped put Dubya Bush in power in 2000 – and Bernie Sanders helped Trump take power by splitting the vote and harming the left wing candidates. The world would be different and much better now had Gore become POTUS and or HRC had too. But does that make them as influential as the side that became POTUS, that took power? That held Congress for far to long and now runs the SCOTUS too thanks to Trump? You think maybe Bush the Second and Trump and their cronies including the likes of Rex Tillerson might be more powerful and influential and yes, more culpable here than some Green academics who I suspect few peopel outside specific circles could name?
You think the wealthy and powerful Fossil fuel companies with vested interests that in your own mind are funding the Greens to oppose nuclear power might actually be more toblame than the peopel wyou think theymight be puppeteering? Or, y’know, the opposite? Because that makes sense how? You think Greenpeace supposedly gets fossil fuel money and then tells the Fossil Fuel lobby, well, well protests and fight against your industry and nuclear and that makes sense to blame them more than,well, the Fossil fuel industry itself?
Or if you want blame cast on other things too economic inertia here has a lot to answer for in stopping using solar now it is cheaper than nuclear as this link notes :
https://www.popsci.com/story/environment/cheap-renewable-energy-vs-fossil-fuels/
Have you read that? You think it might have a point or are you going to say its incorrect and if so why?
I’ve said there might be some role for nuclear, I’ve shown you articles showing where and why I think renewables can play a more significant role. I think some new nuclera technologies have a lot of potential but for you it seems it has to be all nuclear, nuclear dominated, nothing but nuclear (& okay a splash of hydro)) despite the nuclear industry not actually having the tech you say they have.
Why is that? What has made you so absolutely devoted to nuclear powewr above all else and what too do you think you are accomplishing here after allthese comments on this thread GOTS?
@ 192. GerrardOfTitanServer : is there any evidnece we could supply or anything we say that make you reconsider and change your views here?
@162. Marcus Ranum :
I assume that’d be me – an Aussie who is a member of our Greens party which I stated in comment # 83.
FWIW I’m a member who has very briefly met the former party’s leader Christine Milne once many years ago and have met our local Greens Senator once in the past five years or so. I pay membership fees, hand out out how to vote cards at elections -state and federal – and .. that’s about it. My influence is extremely, frustratingly minimal really. As far as the party’s platform goes it can be found here :
https://greens.org.au/policies
Nuclear power doesn’t feature at all significantly there although, yes, the party is opposed to it and to uranium mining especially due to its impacts on our Indigenous Peoples. They are, of course, strongly in favour of climate action and renewables for energy.
The Greens influence is sadly, minimal too having just a single seat in the Federal House of Reps and 9 Senators out of the 76 seat Aussie Senate – despite getting 10% of the vote which is nearly double that of the (rural-based, radical “conservative”, science-denying) Nationals which govern in Coalition with our terribly misnamed, reich-wing Liberal party despite getting about 5% of the national vote last election. Admittedly complicated by the merged Queesland LNP.
As far as the USA Greens go; had I been in the USA, Jill Stein would NOT have had my support due to the even more messed up political system there which renders minor parties spoilers instead of allowing them a proper role through preferential voting. Plus her anti-science esp anti-vaxx beliefs.
“Controlled opposition”. Here, let just repeat again what Dr James Hansen said:
https://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/jim-hansen-presses-the-climate-case-for-nuclear-energy/http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110729_BabyLauren.pdfTo respond to many of your questions, let me repeat for emphasis one smaller bit of that quote from James Hansen.
“The bigger problem is that people who accept the reality of climate change are not proposing actions that would work.”
Then why is nuclear power illegal in Australia?
Re American politics. Just look at the Green New Deal which, at best, is ambivalent about nuclear power, and realistically, is the outgrowth of a movement that is anti-nuclear power.
It is incorrect for two basic reasons. I’ve already said it in this thread, but let me say it again.
Reason 1. Financial accounting games. Almost all cost comparisons are done via the financial methodology of LCOE, levelized cost of electricity. LCOE uses discount rates. Discount rates are a tool for private investors to make short term profits. Applying a “discount rate” means that you “discount” or ignore part of the value of the thing based on how long from now it is. Value that is delivered now is not discounted. Value that is delivered 1 year from now is discounted 3% to 10%, depending on whatever number the author chooses to use. Value that is delivered 2 years from now is discounted at the same rate, but compounded for the two years. The next result is that for a nuclear power plant which lasts 80 years, a 3% discount rate causes roughly 66% of the total value of the nuclear power plant to be “discounted”, aka the LCOE calculation is something like (total costs) / (total electricity produced) × 33%. It’s a penalty based on how long the plant lasts. The longer that the plant lasts, the more it is penalized. For a 10% discount rate on a plant that lasts 80 years, such as used in some places in the IPCC reports, roughly 90% of the value is discounted, e.g. LCOE is calculated as (total costs) / (total electricity produced) × 10%.
In other words, for the financial methodology that basically everyone uses, extremely short-term thinking is baked into the model. No surprise that the model favors technologies with short lifetimes before replacement, such as solar, wind, and especially batteries.
We as society shouldn’t be concerned with shut short-term profit thinking. But wait, I know what you’re about to say. “It matters how quickly we can build the solution.” On that, I agree. That’s why we should be comparing total upfront capital costs. On that, nuclear is the clear winner. Even at Hinkley C / Vogtle costs against optimistic costs for solar wind transmission batteries etc. We should also be comparing how much it costs to maintain each kind of grid in steady-state, e.g. total costs divided by equipment lifetimes. On that, nuclear is also the clear winner. Even at Hinkley C / Vogtle costs against optimistic costs for solar wind transmission batteries etc.
Reason 2. LCOE compares costs using boundaries based a particular corrupt market and regulatory structure. LCOE comparisons between solar/wind vs nuclear/coal are comparing apples to oranges. They ought to be comparing total system costs. Adding solar and wind to a grid often increases total system costs. This would be especially true beyond 30% of the grid. They’re not acocunt for the fact that adding solar and wind requires more transmission, and transmission is expensive. They’re not account for the fact that solar and wind are unreliable. You can’t retire any of the fossil fuel generators that they’re supposedly replacing. You can save on fuel costs, but not capital costs of these fossil fuel plants. Saving fuel costs will reduce total system costs, but usually the other additional costs outweigh this savings, leading to higher total system costs, especially as we start to exceed approx 30% of the grid. As you start to get to roughly 30% of the grid, you start experiencing regular periods of excess electricity. It’s at this point that you need even more transmission, and you start to need storage, and both are extremely expensive. Sometime after this point, you also start to need synchronous condensors for grid inertia, and special diesel generators and boilers for the sole purpose of blackstart capability. Just more costs that are not included in the typical cost comparisons.
Note that an extremely common tactic in academic papers trying to model this is to overbuild solar and wind by 2x in order to drastically reduce transmission and storage requirements. Note that this is yet another cost that is not included in LCOE.
In total, a grid based primarily on solar and wind is easily 10x the cost of a grid based primarily on nuclear, and maybe up to 50x, depending on how optimistic or pressimistic your assumptions.
We don’t have time for “potential”. Green energy advocates have been talking about “potential” now for 60 years. Amory Lovins and other advocates have been saying this is the year that renewables are finally ready to replace fossil fuels, and they’ve been saying the same thing for 60 years. We’ve waited more than enough. Let’s go with what we know works instead of on the boy who cried wolf for 60 years.
Prove to me that renewables can actually replace fossil fuels worldwide in a time that is comparable to the nuclear plan and with a cost that is comparable to the nuclear plan e.g. comparable to coal.
For example, show me the proper modeling based on historical wind and solar data that you really can keep 99.95% grid uptimes with a combination of a cross-continent transmission grid, solar and wind overbuild, storage, which takes into account facts like transmission losses, storage losses, synchronous condensers for grid inertia, and diesel generators and boilers for blackstart, and show me how much this would cost and how quickly it could be built.
An example of a paper that means to show this is Mark Jacobson’s 100% WWS paper. Unfortunately, the paper is so severely flawed that I’m convinced that Jacobson knew it was fatally flawed before he even published it, which in this case means he basically faked his data and results. There are other papers that try to show the same thing, but they’re all fatally flawed.
Alternatively, find me the technological breakthrough in storage that can cheaply storage intermittent electricity. The technology must use only materials that can scale to the amounts that we need (e.g. at least 30 TW * 1-2 days at least); consequently no li-ion batteries, no lead-acid batteries, no batteries based on nickel either. The technology must have high round-trip efficiency, or solar and wind prices must drop substantialy more so that we can overbuild them by a lot to account for the low round-trip efficiency of the storage. Synthetic fuel generation may be required for seasonal storage for some areas, or perhaps very long distance transmission would be used – that also needs to be accounted for.
Investors know that storage is where the problem is. That’s why we see a few new vaporware battery startups announced every year. However, they never go anywhere. The new flavor of the month is iron batteries. It too will likely pass for some new fad.
Apologies. I messed up that math. Let me try again.
3% discount rate, 80 year plant lifetime.
LCOE = (total costs) / ((total electricity produced) × 33%)
10% discount rate, 80 year plant lifetime.
LCOE = (total costs) / ((total electricity produced) × 10%)
The Amish aren’t a pre-industrial society. They just have some strongly held beliefs about self-sufficiency that include not being forced by government to be part of the public power grid. They actually consider it a virtue to use as little electricity/water/kerosene as possible in addition to eschewing most modern work saving appliances. I’m not advocating for everyone going to kerosene, but the attitude towards wasting resources and being mindful of power use as a community would help immensely in getting a coherent plan to address global warming underway.
They in fact run small furniture making factories in my region. I haven’t researched how they are powered but they make beautiful shaker-style furniture.
Here’s another reason why people don’t take GOTS seriously: He utterly dominates a thread, often posting more text than all the other commenters combined, yet repeatedly fails to answer simple questions, often asked by multiple commenters. How in the world can one spew so much text, and manage to evade answering so many questions, unless it is intentional?
And that’s the thing with blanket statements – whether one intends for them to apply to every specific individual or not, that’s how it tends to come across.
BTW GerrardOfTitanServer, I’m also in California, and not far from the ocean. You’re welcome to come and throw me in it. It’d certainly be preferable to seeing you overrun every damned thread that even mentions climate change, renewable energy, or anything nuclear.
lochaber
Which simple questions have I not answered? I’m trying to answer all of them.
Tethys
Paraphrase “they’re not pre-industrial, they just choose to eliminate or minimize as much as possible all benefits of the industrial revolution”. That makes no sense to me. Exactly what benefits of the industrial revolution do they use? From what little I know, the Amish live their life very similarly to how most Europeans and White Americans would have lived their life just at the start of the industrial revolution, e.g. before the industrial revolution.
Doing a brief Wikipedia on it, it seems that there’s a lot more variety in the Amish than I thought regarding the use of technology. Interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish
Citing the theoretical cheap safe disposal for the nuclear waste again will not alter the fact that no such facility exists, and realistically will not be built within the near future.
The cost to have it sitting in casks is real, and decreases the money available to invest in any new infrastructure. It’s economics, not a hatred of nuclear that is driving the investment in much cheaper renewables generation. We can’t get rid of the waste and storing it is costing a small fortune every year.
Tangent: What’s really fascinating to me is that of the listed technologies, motorized washing machines is the most commonly used kind of technology by different Amish communities. That surprises me. It’s actually really progressive for gender norms. One of the big transformations of household life that helps lead to emancipation of women in traditional societies is the introduction of electricity and the washing machine. Before that, it was typically women who would have to spend a huge amount of time every week to wash clothes. Electrical clothes washers are a huge, huge time savings which is really hard to appreciate unless you’re tried to wash your own clothes without one. By contrast, almost all Amish don’t use (mechanical) tractors. Automation for the traditional women’s role, and no automation for the traditional men’s role. Really interesting.
Yes, there is a great deal of variation in level of modern tech among the different Amish groups.
Thriftiness and valuing physical labor are common values in all their communities. Vanity and consumerism are considered social ills.
It’s a very different mindset.
What could you possibly be talking about? The property value? Property taxes? The cost for the fence? Security maybe? It’s not like you need that much security. These casks are mammoth; no one is stealing one without heavy industrial equipment and a lot of time, and no one is damaging one without lots of time plus industrial equipment, or significant military hardware. Have you seen what happens when a train hits one of these things going at speed? The train disintegrates and the cask is barely scratched.
Why do you think it costs anything but a paltry amount of money to let dry casks just sit on an empty tarmac in the middle of nowhere? You completely lost me.
You would be surprised at how women are valued equally when the gendered division of labor produces most of your food. Traditionally women keep the home garden and preserve all the produce, in addition to tending any poultry, dairy, housekeeping, cooking, and caring for any children.
Diesel tractors can be repaired by the farmer. Newfangled electronic machines cannot.
I’m talking about that 2.5 million per year that is paid to the Prairie Island Band for allowing the nuclear plant to store its waste and continue operating.
The waste you keep claiming can be whisked off to a non-existent cheap safe disposal facility.
Tethys.
Re the 2.5 million. That’s entirely a political problem. There’s no technical problem here. Just find some empty land somewhere and put the dry casks there. It’s a catch-22. No one wants to take it because they all think it’s the worst thing ever, which leads some people, such as you, to conclude that it must be a serious problem, which then leads to no one wanting to take it, etc. It’s a vicious cycle which we need to break by making the observation that nuclear waste in dry casks is not going to hurt anyone, and the further observation that it is hard to imagine how it could possibly hurt anyone.
@240: Gaslighting PRATTs dismissed.
Another press release:
Argon fluoride laser could lead to practical fusion reactors
It will also whiten your teeth!
Cost of cask storage: Of course you should have security and pay for it. I don’t want those casks stolen and the contained material used for ‘dirty bombs’. I also don’t want the contained material to become uncontained and leak into the environment as so many other industrial hazards have in the past.
The 2.5 million per year is to compensate the Prairie Island Mdewankton Sioux for storing those casks immediately adjacent to their homes and remaining scrap of ancestral land. It’s an unforeseen expense of having a nuclear power plant.
Its also stored in the floodplain of the largest river in the US, so we have a potential for creating a huge zone of nuclear contamination.
(Wiki)
It would be interesting to calculate the net carbon production of the various communal villages of the Amana Colonies with the average US energy consumer.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amana_Colonies
Too much info to excerpt, but since society as a whole will be forced to use energy more wisely they might serve as a good model for how to live sustainably.
Producing their own material goods to a very high standard of quality is a key component of their social culture.
I do want to note this particular bit of info
Marx would be so proud!! In fact, if you check the footnote section, one of the sources is
It is unfortunate that most people imagine China and the USSR when they see the term communism. If it wasn’t for the god bits, a society that takes care of everyone’s basic needs, is sustainable, and pools their resources is rather ideal.
Tethys, there are organizations of organizations which can work for populations that are roughly 300 or less but which cannot scale to larger cities and regional areas. This seems to be one such case.
Having said that, I think that there’s still a lot that we can do inside the current framework of western countries, such as guaranteed minimum income schemes.
Reginald Selkirk
The way you speak makes me think that you don’t understand some facts of the matter.
These casks are 40 tons. You can’t just sneak up and steal one without someone noticing.
Contrary to the Simpsons, spent nuclear fuel from pressurized light water reactors is a solid, not a liquid.
The NRC, a famously conservative and anti-nuclear organization, says that the threat posed by radiation from a dirty bomb is minimal, and that more people would be killed by the initial conventional explosive than by any radiation.
https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/fs-dirty-bombs.html
The net result of a dirty bomb would be significant contamination but only over an extremely small area. At this point, it’s very different chemically and nuclearly compared to the reactor core material. It’s been out of the core for a long time, meaning that a lot of the nasty stuff has had a chance to decay away. It’s not going to behave like Fukushima and Chernobyl. You’re just going to get a mess over a very small area, e.g. the initial explosion area, that’s expensive to clean up. You’re worrying about nothing here.
So, if you happen to live within the six mile diameter of the ‘mess’ is it reasonable to have safety concerns about storing spent nuclear waste?
Regarding this
The population of the 7 Amana villages is about 1,600 people. Their methane digester seems to be working out quite nicely.
https://corridorbusiness.com/waste-not-want-not/
Tethys.
With a dirty bomb, were talking feet, not miles. Unlike a reactor accident, there’s very little chemical pathways to get stuff into the air. No hydrogen explosion. No superheated water under many atmospheres of pressure. It’s a very different thing. The bomb would spread some minorly radioactive stuff around, which, if you breathed in the dust or licked something, it could hurt you, but that’s about it. It’s way way less bad than fresh fuel in a reactor because it’s had many years to decay.
I did not ask about dirty bombs you nitwit. Do you even know how long it takes for nuclear waste to decay?
Germany is trying to figure out how to store theirs for 1 million years. The best idea is to not have the hazardous waste in the first place, second best, hopefully we will invent a way to turn the waste into a power source.
I think most reasonable people see that a methane digester that runs off completely renewable fuel and produces fertilizer as a byproduct is a better solution to energy than a nuclear plant that is a health hazard at every stage of its existence. The damn storage cask costs 1 million dollars.
A million dollars for a container for the spent fuel nuclear for a few years of operation? Sounds super cheap to me.
Regarding renewables being a waste of money and resources:
For the sake of an argument, let’s assume that wind and solar are inefficient and a waste of humanity’s resources. So what? Humanity spends immense amount of resources on all kinds of stuff that is arguably a waste of time and research funds. Smartphones, for example. Having a portable phone is arguably extremely useful, but do we really need all those latest functions that have cost humanity billions to develop? But fine, let’s say whatever new functions the latest i-phone model has are useful for some people and thus worth all the research funds. What about military budgets? Or marketing? Or bitcoin mining? Those are probably counterproductive for humanity’s wellbeing. Yet we still spend money on all that. And single use plastic packaging. Or bottled water. We spend resources on gathering fossil fuel, producing a plastic bottle, use it for an hour, and then disposing of said bottle. It could be possible to save all this money. Considering how wasteful humanity is with resources, even if wind and solar energy were crap, who cares?
Let’s imagine a homeowner who puts solar panels on their roof. Does anybody seriously imagine that if solar panels weren’t available, this homeowner would instead donate their spare income to fund research of nuclear power plants? Yeah right. They would probably buy a new designer bag, a fifth pair of similar shoes they don’t really need, kitchen remodeling, or whatever. Hell, maybe they would waste spare several hundred dollars on a video game with microtransactions! Or, God forbid, install a bitcoin mining rig.
People waste money on everything. Personally, I’m more concerned about serious wastes of resources like military expenditures. I would fail to see why I should care about people “wasting money” on solar panels even if I agreed that they are a waste of money and resources.
Granted, I do not consider wind and solar energy a waste of resources. But even if I agreed with the premise that wind and solar are a complete waste of humanity’s resources, I would still fail to see why I should especially worry about this particular waste of resources.
Spending 1 million per cask doesn’t include the cost to build, maintain, or run the reactor. Or the 2.5 rental fee. Those are real costs that must be included in the nuclear equation.
I don’t know how much of their own money went into building the Amana digester above the 1.5 million grant, but using a resource like cattle manure and the waste from a paper mill to provide all their electricity and most of their fertilizer wins by an enormous margin in the cost benefit analysis. Iowa has plenty of manure.
“A million dollars for a container for the spent fuel nuclear for a few years of operation? Sounds super cheap to me,” says the guy who insists that a $10K solar array is a waste of money…
I’m just here to see where the goal posts move to next…
To semi-quote the quote of Dr. James Hansen above, the biggest obstacle for fixing climate change is not the climate change deniers and the fossil fuel companies. Rather, the biggest obstacle is that people who want to fix climate change are not proposing policies that will work. The problem is not the waste of resource per se. It’s that this wasteful policy is being pursued in place of a policy that will work.
…
Seriously? Are you innumerate or something? Do I really need to explain the difference? 1 million fee for a 1 GW generator, vs a 10k price for something that produces a million times less power, daily average, and which produces intermittent instead of dispatchable power.
…
lochaber
I can’t address issues that you won’t name.
…the biggest obstacle for fixing climate change is not the climate change deniers and the fossil fuel companies.
The companies whose products cause climate change, and whose decades-long propaganda campaigns have been poisoning and misdirecting public debate, aren’t the biggest problem WRT climate change? Thanks for showing (again) what a lying, scapegoating hack you are.
(PS: We’re not proposing policies that “will work,” we’re proposing policies that ARE WORKING. Unlike those perfectly safe and profitable fantasy nuclear plants that have been just barely over the horizon for the last few decades.)
Raging Bee
Ok. I don’t mind being grouped together with other “lying, scapegoating hack” climate scientists like Dr James Hansen, Dr Kerry Emanuel. I’ve picked the side of the scientists against special interest groups.
Gots thinks it’s better to stay hostage to the energy mega- multinational corporations that CREATED global warming, and want to keep raking in those profits.
We need to be like Amana, and make our own power that requires no fossil fuel.
It cost a mere toddle of money in comparison to just the upkeep of one nuclear plant, never mind the cost to build it.
Tethys
I just think it’s better to stay with what actually works without fossil fuels, and I, like most climate scientists, think it’s basically impossible to replace fossil fuels worldwide with renewables alone.
Off the top of my head, I’m guessing / relatively sure there’s nowhere near enough trash dumps so that it could supply enough methane to replace fossil fuels worldwide.
Yeah, and wind and solar actually work. So what’s the problem? It’s not like we’ll be replacing fossils with nuclear anytime in the foreseeable future either…
Most climate scientists think they don’t work well enough to replace fossil fuels. See my quotes above.
It cost 993.3 million to build Prairie Island, and it is creating an even more intractable and costly problem with waste. It generates 8746 GHw.
Those are the numbers I’m basing my opinion on. It’s pretty cheap to replace that with 900 solar households. There are some efficiency trade offs in how we build the grid, and industry will be screwed, but that’s why we will build all the small hydro generation and pumped hydro storage projects. Add in the wind that is currently providing its portion of carbon free and by 2030 we will have somehow managed to switch to green energy without building new nuclear capacity.
We have an endless supply of shit and make all sorts of trash that could serve as the other raw material necessary to fuel a methane digester.
Decreasing methane is even more important than decreasing carbon. I’ve not done the math to see how much total atmospheric carbon is reduced by using a source of methane and another fuel that is currently considered hazardous trash to provide all their power.
I am amused that it was the farmers who got the methane digester to function properly, because what worked according to all the scientists and engineers did not actually work in real life.
I’ve spent my life around developers and engineers, and a large portion of my childhood physically living on construction sites in remote locations, in the little trailers we moved around the country. I’m happy that most of the coal plants have been demolished or shut down. It was a stupid waste of resources way back in the 70s when all the scientists claimed coal and nuclear were the only way to meet our energy needs.
Shit and garbage is renewable, but we just waste it and pay for the privilege with sewage treatment facilities, pollution, and landfills.
We need to be more like those Pietist farmers, who took all the resources they had available and invested in the one that literally turns garbage into more than enough power, plus heat, plus reduces the need to buy additional fertilizer made from petrochemicals.
It’s the Swiss Army knife approach to design, rather than the one size fits all approach that created global warming in the first place.
From my link @250
Gerrard as usual hand waves away any facts that don’t tally with the opinions of his favourite climate gurus, in full creationist style. Meanwhile, hard headed engineers and scientists get on with using the tools at hand to reduce carbon emissions all over the world. When nuclear power is able to be a viable part of the solution, I’m sure it’ll be used as appropriate.
Where there are people and livestock, there is a waste stream of manure and suitable materials from industrial waste to build methane digesters.
One small cattle feedlot produces 75 tons of manure daily, but wasn’t enough? Great! Two feedlots of manure is easily sourced within thirty miles, so transport cost is the major expense.
WTF? I don’t even know what to say. Somehow, you’re flipping reality on its head by taking special interest lobbyists and politicians and calling them “engineers and scientists”, and you’re taking the real scientists and calling them “gurus”. I just don’t even.
…
Except it’s not. I’ve cited the numbers. The residential rooftop solar cells plus installation are about as expensive, and we haven’t even started on batteries, or anything on the grid to maintain 99.95% electricity uptime for the houses. I’ve been the one citing numbers and papers and expert opinions, and you haven’t. There’s nothing more that I can say about your delusion unless you start committing to hard numbers or start citing papers which commit to hard numbers.
You’ve cited numbers that aren’t relevant while ignoring all the numbers that proved that Gerard is as full of shit as that methane digester.
Your math skills are not very good if you need a calculator to figure out that 900 households at 11,500 installed is a bargain compared to spending more than 993.3 million to build one nuclear plant with less than that capacity. Overbuilding and redundant systems are basic concepts to any power generation engineering. We don’t have until 2050 to replace either of our nuclear plants. They are already operating beyond the original specifications and have generated a cluster fuck of waste and cost that’s going to be around forever, in any practical human terms.
Solar is here. It’s affordable for those with enough disposable income to buy one now. It might not be the most efficient system, but again as long as net carbon goes down it’s not a drawback for consumers to become owners of their own power production and cut into the fossil fuel corporations and the assholes who want to privatize public utilities into their private profit stream.
GoTS must not believe forests exist, because trees can’t grow on the open ocean
Or we can’t transport goods worldwide, because there isn’t a road from North America to Australia
Tethys
Actually, I think you should take out that calculator, and remember your dimensional analysis from high school chemistry class.
Assume 1 KWe per home.
Rooftop solar.
Assuming 2.5 USD / watt nameplate, solar cell, upfront costs, including installation costs.
1703.4 KWh / sq m, solar radiation, per year, in Minneapolis.
Thus, 194 W / sq m, solar radiation, yearly average.
Thus, 12,900 USD per home.
Nuclear.
993.3 million USD, upfront costs.
8746 GWh, yearly real production.
Thus, 995 USD per home.
Again, my math skills must not be very good because it looks over 10x cheaper to me.
I was surprised by this. The cost for the nuclear power plant looks very, very low. Wikipedia does say upfront costs were 993.3 million USD (in 2007 USD).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie_Island_Nuclear_Power_Plant
That’s a very cheap power plant.
Oh, that explains it. Wikipedia says construction began in 1968 and finished in 1969, that’s why. That was before the anti-nuclear movement got involved and changed all of the regulations to make nuclear power more expensive. Today’s nuclear power plants cost 10x that, but as you cited for me (thanks btw!) it doesn’t have to be like that.
PS: It’s important to look at both upfront costs and total costs divided by equipment lifetimes. In that regard, that nuclear power plant will last about 4x as long as those solar cells. IIRC, the solar AC/DC inverter has an even shorter lifetime. Batteries, if included, would also have a very short lifetime too, meaning that your rooftop total system costs divided by equipment lifetimes are quickly approaching 100x more than the nuclear power plant. Just saying.
I’ve been the one citing numbers and papers and expert opinions, and you haven’t.
And no matter how much numbers and papers you cite, it’s not enough to hide your abysmal dishonesty, bad-faith arguments, willful ignorance of observable events, irrational hatred of people who are getting results you insist don’t exist or don’t matter, and obvious hyperpartisan divisive destructive rhetoric. We’ve experienced observable reality, we’ve seen through all your walls of text and we all know you’re full of shit.
And besides, when asked directly about the massive cleanup efforts around Chernobyl, you explicitly said you DID NOT KNOW why the Soviets made such efforts. So you really can’t pretend you know what you’re talking about here. Go to bed.
Raging Bee
I can’t do anything if you just name-call. If you want to point to specific acts of dishonesty or irrationality, I can do something with that, but not generic name-calling.
And yes, I don’t know exactly why the Soviets did exactly the amount of cleaning that they did. That sounds like an advanced and extensive research topic to be able to answer that exactly. They did it for a combination of good reasons and possibly bad reasons. These decisions were surely made by lots of different people at different points in the “chain of command”, at different times and places, and the reasons would be different for each different time and place and cleanup method, and different people involved in the decision-making process for the same cleanup method at the single time and place might have had different reasons for doing it. I don’t think you understand what a gargantuan research project that this would be to answer that question.
A much simpler question to answer would be: Was it necessary. That’s something that can be answered. To that, for example, the evacuations at Pripyat were indicated based on the radiation levels. Whether the cleanup at Pripyat was necessary or not depends on the goals involved. That depends on when people will return or not, and when. I can try to have that conversation with you, if you want.
Since Westinghouse no longer exists and judging by the boondoggle that is Georgia’s nuclear power project, the cost in today’s dollars is going to be much more than the cost adjusted figure quoted.
It’s a non-starter from the project management POV. No supply to build the thing is highly problematic if you only have 10 to 20 years of service left for your power plant. Waste is a health hazard that entails ongoing costs and the potential to create disasters. Solar won’t, and so what if a consumer decides to spend their capital? The utilities don’t pay for it. They pay you for the power though.
Tethys
I would at least expect a brief admittance of gross error plus brief apology after that incredibly poor showing. Don’t you feel any shame? At least I apologize and retract when someone shows that I’m wrong.
On to the new goalposts. Yes. Today’s nuclear is more expensive. About 10x more expensive than that. It’s still cheaper than your rooftop solar plan. As I showed in272, and also in earlier posts. Some engagement with that argument would be nice.
You aren’t including all the costs in your math.
Nor will you get an apology because lol.
Hey, this seems interesting! We have this hydrogen project being built as a pilot program. The plan is to use the periods where we generate excess capacity via wind to use the nuclear power plant to make hydrogen. It seems we have a glut of clean dependable wind power.
https://kstp.com/minnesota-news/us-nuclear-lab-partnering-with-xcel-energy-to-produce-hydrogen-minnesota/5922161/
Nor are you. The cheapest part of the rooftop solar plan is the rooftop solar. The batteries, grid, and backup cost way more. I accounted for a lot more of the costs back in 84. Nuclear is still cheaper.
There aren’t any batteries. That was explained multiple times.
Here is another one of the local green energy projects. We have been turning trash into power plant fuel for 25 years, and a fire has resulting in us having to rebuild parts of the shedder plant. It’s going to be more efficient while doubling its capacity to process local trash.
https://www.waste360.com/design-and-construction/new-red-wing-minn-plant-double-waste-processed-fuel
The grid is already there and why does the average city homeowner need more backup?
The goal is to reduce the demand on the power plants, especially during peak load, which happens to be hot sunny days which generate the maximum solar capacity. Weren’t you complaining that people were burning down the existing system? They augment the system and can generate more than enough to eliminate their utility bills. This costs the public utility zero to install.
Tethys
We should be comparing like to like, meaning total system costs. Is the goal to get rid of greenhouse gas emissions from broader society or not? Or just to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from your home under the flawed model of net-metering? I’m trying to actually solve for greenhouse gas emissions here.
The atmosphere and biosphere doesn’t care about your net metering. They care about greenhouse gas emissions. Houses using the grid are “responsible” for the greenhouse gas emissions of the grid. A house could be “net zero” via net-metering, but still responsible for a lot of greenhouse gas emissions.
Say it with me: Electricity is a service, not a commodity.
Come on. This is 101 stuff which you could easily look up. You are wrong. In most places, max demand happens around 6 PM when people get off of work, which is exactly when solar stops working. In California, the result of this mismatch is known as the “duck curve”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve
Also, the hottest part of the day is around 3 PM, not noon.
To put it another way, seeking rooftop solar is a cul-de-sac. it won’t get you past roughly 30% emissions reductions without massively expensive batteries and lots of extra transmission. Once you get to 30%, e.g. covering all of your demand from 8 AM to 4 PM, roughly, then you need to start solving for the rest of the problem. The only practical solution for the rest of the problem for 90% of places is lots and lots of nuclear. In that kind of situation, the rooftop solar becomes stranded capital; it doesn’t have any value when the grid already has enough nuclear to cover the 6 PM peak. That’s why rooftop solar is a cul-de-sac, a dead-end.
So you just get to post absolute nonsense, even making fun of me for doing the math which you get wrong in the same post (citing a specific example where nuclear is 10x cheaper)? Have you no shame?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy
I indeed am entirely lacking in shame over never having made any of those claims. Sunset in summer in Minnesota is closer to 9-10 pm you silly California type person.
I wonder how many comments it takes to = a beverage of choice for Marcus?
For a brief minute, I considered that maybe I was drinking too much, because I was under the impression that consumable beverages were shipped, stored, and sold in glass bottles, plastic bottles, aluminum cans, mylar bags, and waxed cardboard boxes…
Since not all beverages are sold in glass bottles, than apparently beverages can’t be sold in glass bottles, so I guess I’m not really drinking a beer out of a glass bottle right now by GoTS reasoning?
Good to know…
Beer cannot be made at home, it can only be obtained via one way transmission lines.
I thought I ate chicken and rice (and egg, but I guess that’s sorta chicken…) the other day, but that can’t be true…
If it were possible for me to eat chicken, then wouldn’t everyone be eating all chicken all the time? or if I ate rice, wouldn’t everyone be eating all rice all the time? and everyone can’t be eating all rice and all chicken all the time, so something must be wrong here. clearly, I didn’t eat chicken and rice (and egg), and I never have, and that is an incomprehensible situation, and anybody claiming to eat chicken, or rice, or egg, must be… lying?
I think I’m missing a step?
care to help me out, GoTS?
Turning the nuclear waste into a usable power source seems like another good thing to throw money at. At present it’s just sitting around costing money.
I don’t know why 12.5 million of private solar on homes is cheaper than 993.3 million according to gots, and too tired to bother engaging him.
Damn it auto spell. Why it isn’t cheaper, as clearly the nuclear plant cost is the larger number.
The 12.5 million includes extra in my calculations, for some battery storage as described by tuatara way upthread.
Fron the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2021 (emphasis mine)..
They go on to say….
And further….but troubling news….
But hey, what the fuck would the authors of this repot, who have obviously been infiltrated by the nasty murderous greens, know about any of this anyway….especially according to GoDs (TM).
I have offered the link to this report previously but for those that missed it you can get it from here:
https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/-World-Nuclear-Industry-Status-Report-2021-.html
Oh and also I have brought this up before too, but paying US$2.5/Watt for rooftop solar is a rip off. Here in Australia we pay about AU$1.5/Watt installed (unsubsidised) or about US$1.13/Watt.
Oh, and one last thing…..not exactly new news either….but recent.
https://www.ft.com/content/f6693948-2c3d-4508-96cf-c374ef0fa6ad
Gerrard @275: Why would I want to “try to have that conversation” with someone who’s already admitted both inexcusable ignorance and cowardly waffling on the subject of said conversation? Your dishonesty and admission of ignorance is all the conversation anyone might need to hear. Fuck off.
lochaber
Solar thermal. The latest barrage of the gish gallop. I can deconstruct that too if you want.
Tethys
Re your 12.5 million cost. I’m sorry. I don’t understand. I’ve shown how Prairie Point nuclear power plant is 10x cheaper than current rooftop solar costs, considering only upfront costs. (A similar conclusion would be reached concerning total lifetime costs, and total system costs (upfront and lifetime).) I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. I’ve shown my calculations. You mention some calculations of your – what post was that in? I don’t remember seeing it.
tuatara
That same virtuous cycle would apply to nuclear too, but that’s never assumed. Instead, they inappropriately extrapolate from first-of-a-kind nuclear designs built by inexperienced work crews. Also, LCOE is a scam measurement, as I’ve explained in detail here. It doesn’t include total system costs which for solar and wind which is much higher than the cost of solar and wind, unlike nuclear, and it also embodies a specific kind of capitalist short-term thinking by using financial methodology to favor short-term solutions – and isn’t that precisely the kind of thinking that got us into this mess in the first place? Why are you using the capitalist measure of short-term investments in this discussion?
Raging Bee
So, you think not knowing that specific think makes me grossly ignorant. Ok. Whatever. And you think that I’ve been lying (as opposed to simply mistaken). Ok. Whatever. Go ahead and linger in your delusion. I guess that there’s nothing that I can say or the scientists can say which could convince you otherwise.
Again, are you serious about solving the problem of global warming or not? Focus on the fixing the hard problem, not the easy problem. Focusing on fixing 100% of the problem. If your plan works only for summer, then it’s a non-starter.
Also, solar at sunset is producing near zero electricity. Solar is only producing significant amounts of electricity for a lesser amount of time compared to sunrise to sunset.
I am sure that the authors of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report, from which the quotes that I posted were taken, would love to hear GoDs critique of their methods. Perhaps he should contact them directly.
We don’t need to have extra power for cooling in fall, winter, or spring. Long summer days come with cold, dark, longish winters.
A modern solar system requires 5.6 hours of sun to generate its minimum rating. We have 18 hours of daylight in summer, and a bunch of windmills that also tend to have peak production from mid- morning to early evening.
Some people do the unthinkable, and don’t have central air conditioning in the first place. Cooling is a very small to non-existent portion of most households annual power use.
Focus on the fixing the hard problem, not the easy problem.
Why not focus on whatever parts of the problem we can fix at each given instance? That’s how progress is ALWAYS made. And besides, more neighborhoods using solar or wind means less demand for nuclear power on top of all the heavy-industrial applications it’s supposed to be good for.
Focusing on fixing 100% of the problem.
Would any nuclear plant you build “fix 100% of the problem?” Of course not — none of the nuclear plants the French built did that; each one was a STEP toward “fixing 100% of the problem.” That’s how you get to 100%. If all we do is sit around waiting for “100%” in one swell foop, then we’re going to get exactly 0%.
If your plan works only for summer, then it’s a non-starter.
Whenever it works, it serves to reduce fossil-fuel consumption. The only “non-starter” here is your dumbass reactionary opposition to every start that’s actually been made.
(BTW, the Sun does still shine on winter days, and the wind blows all year round, remember? Seriously, when was the last time you actually gone out of your house and had a look around?)
tuatara
Oh come on. Do the basic modicum of research please. The World Nuclear Industry Status Report is not a report from the world’s nuclear industry. It’s from famous anti-nuclear activists.
Tethys
Again, solve for winter, or you’re not being serious here about global warming. Solve for the hardest season, and not the easiest.
PS:
You’re equivocating. Each nuclear plant built gets us closer to a 100% solution for electricity. Each rooftop solar installed does not get us any closer to a 100% solution for electricity. You have a dogmatic faith belief that renewables will all work in the end, and from that you argue that we should be building more renewables. I don’t share that faith belief. I see places all over the world that are struggling with solar and wind and barely making any progress in spite of spending huge sums of money and time, and I’ve seen the modeling that explains why. By contrast, France proves that we can solve it with nuclear.
Using metaphor, there are two paths to the goal, but on one of the paths, the bridge is out. You can take that path with the bridge being out, getting 30% closer, but then you’re at a dead end. That’s what solar and wind is. Taking that path is a foolish decision. Citing “but we’re 30% closer” as a good thing is a foolish thing to say.
Another way to read your suggestion is that we should focus on short term improvements, and that will lead to solutions. We’ve been trying it your way around the world for decades, and look what we have to show for it? Nothing. Again, by contrast, France shows us another way, a way that actually works. How many more years must we waste our time on renewables before you accept the truth that they don’t work?
Practically speaking, in many places, it doesn’t. For example, solar in Germany in winter produces about 2% of nameplate, daily average.
I won’t waste my time with the ever moving goalposts.
The question was “IS more nuclear power the only way to generate enough clean renewable energy to save the planet from global warming?
I’ve listed all the ways we are currently generating an excess supply of clean, green energy, and retooling or refurbishing all those coal plants and hydro infrastructure, without any new nuclear.
Gots is simply going to keep claiming that 12.5 million for 900 homes worth of solar power is 10x more than 993.3 million for nuclear while attempting to gaslight my math.
For heating we need a system that makes heat. Hmm, how can we make hot water to circulate through our homes via pipes and radiators so we stay warm? Clearly the ONLY way to do such a thing is nuclear energy!!
You cannot generate a surplus of energy in the summer so that the utility can repay you in winter heating energy. It’s not efficient to distribute the heat energy from a methane digester, but huge industrial generators have no trouble converting it to steam for turbines.
Tethys
Oh, I understand now. Why are you comparing rooftop solar sufficient for 900 homes with a nuclear power plant that’s sufficient for something like 900,000 homes? I’m sorry for not noticing that earlier. Why would you do that? Why? Why would use only 0.1% of the nuclear power plant’s capability in this comparison?
How’s the utility going to do that without loads and loads of nuclear? Pixie dust?
Never said it wasn’t efficient. Just said that there’s not enough methane from trash dumps for this to make a significant difference. Portraying it as an alternative is dishonest or ignorant.
Why are trash dumps the only option for methane. Do you not produce manure?
Why can’t we repurpose sewage treatment facilities into methane digesters, use the excess heat energy to power the steam turbines, and generate electricity from our waste? It works.
While also generating electricity from the methane digester, just to make sure that the multi-tasking output of a digester is taken into account when you add it to a whole system that can take advantage of the heat output that is generated by a digester.
It solves the intermittent issue nicely too.
Tethys, it doesn’t matter what any of us say here. According to GoD the ONLY solution is nuclear despite the mounting evidence to the contrary, such as….
https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australia-makes-big-leap-towards-100-pct-renewables-as-wind-and-solar-set-free/amp/
It seems that, thankfully, the people who really matter, such as the network operators and power generators, don’t take any notice if GoD.
Ooh, AND…..(I have posted this link before but didnt quote from it. My bad)
https://www.ft.com/content/f6693948-2c3d-4508-96cf-c374ef0fa6ad
It seems that industry is blazing their own trail too, with solutions that they can implement now, not in 20 years.
Perhaps by the time all that new nuclear generation starts up we will have already transitioned to low carbon energy production.
Congrats Australia! Synchronous condensers sounds like another excellent bit of new tech.
Because 900,000 is a number pulled from your arse? Those 900 solar homes were calculated as the number necessary to generate more than the electricity currently produced by the extant nuclear plant. I even added in the battery storage since you complained about so much.
Perhaps you should apologize for your gross errors and just generally being dishonest? It’s obvious you figured out that 10x was the cost difference between solar and nuclear, but then repeatedly reversed them in some weird attempt to make another gotcha argument. You may as well try to convince me you’re a toadstool at this point.
Pointless contradiction is not an argument.
I’m sure there are actuarial tables to calculate the risk of either of our nuclear plants developing a serious containment issue as they approach the end of their functional lifespan.
Since the entire 3.1 million population of the Twin Cities metropolitan area lies within the calculated exposure zone of radiation, we have opted to develop many renewables and rethink our basic infrastructure so we can retire nuclear either permanently, or until
A. its safety and waste issues are sorted and
B. it’s not 10x cheaper to build everything else we’ve built instead.
tuatara
I want you to notice that I was talking about the need for synchronous condensers way back in #34.
Tethys
You’re off by a factor of a thousand. The nuclear plant produces about 1 GWe. That’s enough for about 1 million homes, not a mere 1 thousand homes. 1 GW is 1,000,000,000 watts. A home uses about 1 KW, aka 1,000 watts. That’s a difference of a million, not a thousand. Please try again.
You can’t replace all fossil fuels + nuclear with renewables. The sooner that you realize this, the better for everyone it will be.
But seriously – you think a large nuclear power plant is only good enough for about 1 thousand homes? How ridiculously ignorant are you? Go read a book. You don’t know anything about this discussion. You should feel ashamed.
I said nothing about the number of homes powered by nuclear. I merely calculated how much solar it took to equal its output, way upthread. Circular arguments don’t interest me.
Each nuclear plant built gets us closer to a 100% solution for electricity.
Yeah, and so does each solar array, wind farm and hydro plant built. Remind us again which of those things are ACTUALLY BEING BUILT TODAY AND IN THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE?
I’m just trying to get Marcus a nice beverage for letting you have this thread, while pointing that you are full of shit. Toadstools are more interesting than blithering bullies.
Each nuclear plant built gets us closer to a 100% solution for electricity.
We have so much wind power to keep the grid humming at 100% that we are building a 14 million dollar hydrogen experiment using the nuclear plants excess capacity. We’re just gonna waste huge swathes of its redundant generation output on seeing if we can make it produce even more green power.
I prefer the 100% green energy solution without the radioactive pollution or existential dread.
@228. GerrardOfTitanServer :
Nah. I mean I can’t stop you quoting Hansen and if you scroll up you can see what he said. Back in 2013 specifically which is a bit outdated as well as not an actual answer.
They aren’t? There’s already been plenty of sources and ideas thrown around here including some role for nuclear power. That again, evades the point of my question.
You are alleging that fossil fuel companies pay Greens specifically Greenpeace to .. oppose fossil fuel companies and call for action on on Climate change? Are you serious? How does that make sense?
The answer is that its complicated with Australia having at least one working reactor at Lucas Heights and having various relevant Federal and state laws involved notably :
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Australia#Nuclear_law (Emphasis added.)
Note the Australian Democrats (now defunct) were a centre left party and are not the Greens which are more progressive and the cenrtre-right major party the ALP has been split on the nuclear issue. IOW. It isn’t just Greens and Greens “ideology” here but much more broad than that.
Scroling down the “Nuclear power debate in Australia” section is intersting here abeit all now very familiar.
Reasons why many Australians don’t think nuclear is appropriate are noted here :
https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/nuclear-power-stations-are-not-appropriate-for-australia-and-probably-never-will-be/
Of course there’s also this recent news item that may be somewhat relevant here :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-22/maralinga-nuclear-particles-more-reactive/100157478
Nuclear advocates have equally been talking about the potnetial for tehri indutsry as long and with arguably less convincing evidence. As noted by others earlier here (& probly afterwards too!) the reactor you (GOTS) seem to be arguing for are NOT actually yet tangibly real and in production from what I understand.
I will add that I do appreciate your list of possible evidence that would change your mind listed there.
Its late here, I’m tired and haven’t read the entire thread but did just want to respond while I can, so, well, this.
PS. Again, though GerrardOfTitanServer, you would seriously rank “Green ideology”* – specifically what and who – as bigger threats to taking Climate Action than Fossil Fuel Companies, Murdoch’s media empire and Reight-wing political Denialist leaders like POTUSes Trump & the two Bushes? Saying that people who acknowledge Gobal Overheating is real and primarily caused by our Greenhouse Gas Emissions are really more culpable for lack of action on that than those who either deny problem exists or minimise the issue and pretend we can go on with emittiing GHGs at the presnet rate or nearly so indefinitely..
You really won’t focus any blame or minimise the blame on Murdoch, Climate Science Deniers and the Fossil Fuel industry and think the “Greens” (who & which? Collectively? All?) have more influence than them?
That still staggers and strikes me most here and seems uttterly absurd to me.
* Or maa-aybe more precisely, anti-nuclear ideology speciifcially which may or may not always be the same thing as Green ideology? Especially if you think of James Hansen as a Green which apparently he himself does – see :
https://www.greensfornuclear.energy/
Where he among others seeks :
Emphasis added.
So, wow, you can favour both nuclear and renewables and it doesn’t have to be either /or but can be both/and with folks still being Greens and pro-nuclear too! Who’d have guessed huh? Besides, er, most of us here? ;-)
Still want to dump ALL Greens into the ocean GOTS?
Excessive generalisation syndrome strikes again?
Since this thread, I have embarked on a process of researching available nuclear reactors, because I was concerned that I was being unfair characterizing them as “powerpoint.” Actually, I’m concluding that I was right – there are existing buildable reactor designs but they’ve all got dangers and are insanely time-consuming to build. There is also a topic I have noticed is not being dwelt upon by nuclear proponents, namely that they tend to be built near rivers, etc., for cooling – and lots of them are going to be at risk from climate change. Of course, there will be engineering responses: spend more money for bigger dikes and backup generators; problems that windmills, hydro, and solar don’t have.
My conclusion at this point is that nuclear boffins have badly over-sold the tech, and are really in trouble. Which puts all of us in increased danger, because they’ve repeatedly screwed the pooch. I’ll also mention that GerrardOfTitanServer is a terrible spokesperson for nuclear power – more over-sold over-blown claims doesn’t help get other people on the nuclear bandwagon. [Note: I am on the nuclear bandwagon] It just serves to make the nuclear industry look incompetent and dishonest. They are trying to sell a load of powerpoint concept art, and all the “clean and safe” reactors are nonexistent, mostly, or overbudget and behind schedule.
I’ve also absorbed a bunch of stuff about the current state of fusion (read: Charles Sief’s Sun In A Bottle) and it looks like the fusion boffins are also over-selling and under-delivering which really sucks because there may be people who advocate “just wait for fusion and it’ll all be OK!” This sort of over-selling becomes an excuse for governments to linger on coal and oil, and it’s time we collectively acknowledge that. It appears there are billions being invested on nuclear fission and fusion so if these systems begin to materialize, we can take down the solar arrays, windmills and so forth that we’re going to need in the meantime. But in the meantime we’re damn fools if we sit with our thumbs in our butts and wait for nuclear to save us.
Gosh, it looks like we’d better throw everything we’ve got at the problem!
@ 286. Tethys : “Sunset in summer in Minnesota is closer to 9-10 pm you silly California type person.”
FWIW. Here in Adelaide, South Oz, 35 degrees South, the Sun sets currently (our late Spring) at 7.45 pm and at its latest at 8.32 pm -although admittedly complicated by our Daylight Saving Time.
D’oh! Source : https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/australia/adelaide?month=12&year=2021
In the vague off chance that someone cares.. Of course in the polar regions or tropics as the extremes… a-n-y-w-a-y..
Also tangential at best but still our currnet sad excuse for a govts policy is basically to loudly announce a so-called “plan” that involves doing stuff all now and relying on technology that isn’t yet invented (or costed) and hope peopel are silly enough tofall for it and reward them by thinking that non-plan actually si something meaningful .. See :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-31/morrison-climate-plan-net-zero-new-model-political-leadership/100576698
& WARNING – Swearing :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIyKmqEdgR4
Of course, it doesn’t help that toxic billionaire miner and tax-dodging Trumpesque crook who helped get the far reichwing LNP re-elected last time Clive Palmer is flogging nuclear power in his appallingly prevalent and annoying fake party advertising / propaganda campaign..
StevoR, that arsehole Clive Palmer can go and live in a bucket of shit with his Ivermectin guzzling mate Craig Kally (once part of the reichwing faction of the reichwing oxymoronic “Liberal” party).
Oh, wait, Palmers party IS a bucket of shit, and he and Kelly turds.
And yes, the plan the twits in power here want us to believe in is the same as GoDs here. Do nothing now because magically in the future it will all be fixed by what is right now imaginary technology.
Might as well blather nonsense. After all, the PM believes in the old “speaking in tongues” bullshit and is waiting for the rapture because God (not GoD) will fix it.
@ ^ tuatara : Truth.
***
Meanwhile when it come stoactually tackling Global Overheating from Al Jazeera :
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/10/31/new-climate-pledges-are-weak-but-it-isnt-too-late-to-catch-up
We can’t do that with nuclear so GerrardOfTitanServer take that as given, rule it out and ask yourself how else we can do it please.
Also as Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, concludes there :
Also from AJ :
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/10/31/restoring-wetlands-can-help-combat-climate-change
Thinking hydro ~ish here from earlier inthethread as well perhaps?
Plus form Aussie ABC the latest news from the COP26 summit here :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-01/cop26-glasgow-climate-summit-/100584162
Marcus
I say again. We don’t need any powerpoint reactor to fix the problem. Proven reactor technology like conventional gen 3 designs and gen 3+ designs like the AP-1000 are more than enough to fix the problem for electricity and industrial heat.
I really wish you wouldn’t implicitly describe me as trying to sell next-gen reactors. I have went out of my way on numerous occasions and spent the large majority of my time defending gen 2 and gen 3 reactors, and saying that they’re more than enough to solve the problem.
…
StevoR
James Hansen explains how it makes sense. Fossil fuel companies know that renewables are no real threat to their business, and this is especially true for the natural gas companies. I would go a step further, and say that the fossil fuel companies recognize the value that green allies have because they will oppose nuclear more than fossil fuels.
If you look at the history of why the Australians Democrats demanded a legal ban on nuclear power, I have no doubt that you will find the same pseudoscience fearmongering Green ideology that I’ve been railing on for this entire thread.
Yes, just like several leading and respectable climate scientists. Quotes above.
Also, not all of those quotes are from 2013. Some of them are from much later. If you think that they changed their mind in the last ~10 years, think again. Ex from 2018:
Quoting leading climate scientist Dr. Kerry Emanuel:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/10/29/top-climate-scientists-warn-governments-of-blatant-anti-nuclear-bias-in-latest-ipcc-climate-report/…
Tethys
Pathetic. Still no apology and retraction for your complete and utter failure. I previously explained to you in detail, and showed my simple high school math, and yet you persisted in your ridiculous assertion that a large 1 GWe nuclear power plant is only good enough for 900 homes, and not 900,000 homes.
GerrardOfTitanServer@#324:
Proven reactor technology like conventional gen 3 designs and gen 3+ designs like the AP-1000 are more than enough to fix the problem for electricity and industrial heat.
How can you call the AP-1000 “proven” when 4 out of 8 deployments are cancelled and the rest are over-budget and experiencing years of delays, while the company that sells them is bankrupt? If that’s what you consider “proven” I’m not surprised you see speculative technology as something on the horizon.
I say again…
…the same crap that’s already been refuted.
Marcus, @319(!):
There’s an interesting new failure mode showing up for a number of existing NPPs – coolant intakes getting clogged by jellyfish, which are becoming more abundant in certain locations due to warming surface waters. (That link’s to an occurance local to me, but it’s also happened in Sweden and Japan.)
Marcus
4 are built and working as advertised. Another 4 were canceled because of reasons that I already named which have nothing to do with the design and everything to do with the hostile regulatory environment and inexperienced work crews.
What kind of wanker demands apologies for errors they themselves fabricated?
I even clarified the 900 figure, just in case you weren’t being a disingenuous asshole.
The only thing you get from me for being a lying, gaslighting POS is an invitation to kindly fuck off.
It’s clear that Gerard has no clue how construction projects work, and apparently a hard time understanding axial tilt.
Inexperienced work crews aren’t acceptable risks if you’re building tech that can go lethally haywire.
The Mississippi River to Gulf of Mexico isn’t the only continent wide watershed that starts in Minnesota. We are the top of the hydrological column, and our rivers drain north to Hudson Bay, and also east to the Atlantic via the Great Lakes.
If we went Chernobyl, the groundwater itself would be contaminated. I don’t think we have found any effective methods to clean groundwater, never mind making it radioactive.
I’m increasingly convinced that nuclear will be replaced with cheaper, less wasteful green energy. Mostly because we have managed to get multiple varieties of it up and WORKING now, with the goal of reducing carbon emissions.
Nobody thought wind could be enough, but we now dependably have excess capacity to invest in developing new technology. Step one of our plan to reduce carbon has been a huge success, we are now in phase two (refurbish infrastructure for modern tech), and by 2030 we might be able to meet our power needs with only renewables.
It is amazing how fast new technologies can emerge when you force your utility to start developing green power generation by banning new nuclear.
I read an article some years ago about how nuclear power plants are built: not by one organization, but by a crazy-quilt of contractors and subcontractors, who don’t always communicate well with each other (and who thus get to blame each other for anything going wrong). In one case, the plumbing inside the containment vessel was done by a different company from the plumbing outside it; and when the two had to be connected, they found out too late that the pipes that were supposed to meet, were at different heights.
I really hope they changed things since then, but given the continued stupid intransigence of shills like Gerrard, I suspect they’re not willing to change a damn thing.
Every type of new construction from a house to a power plant will have a General Contractor, who is often hired by a developer.
The General Contractor will hire sub-contractors from the various trades to complete all the stages, as necessary.
As the complexity increases, so too the number of specialized trades that need be subbed out. It takes a great deal of planning and management to get anything built on time and budget. Unexpected problems are so common that we figure a minimum 10% contingency into the initial budget. Supply issues will sink your project like a rock. Hundreds of workers can’t construct a thing if you don’t have all the necessary parts and supplies to keep them on schedule.
It only takes one fool accidentally leaving a water valve open to destroy weeks of work, and multiple floors of the project. (True story)
Tethys
I still have no fucking idea why you’re comparing the costs of a nuclear power plant that can provide power for 1 million homes to rooftop solar installations for 900 homes. You’re off by 3 orders of magnitude. I don’t know how you “clarified the 900 figure” besides just nakedly asserting that you’re right, and you’re clearly not. Explain it to me like you’re 5 why w should compare the costs of a nuclear power plant capable of powering 1 million homes to the cost of rooftop solar for 900 homes.
I don’t know why you think that I don’t know how construction projects work. You might be implying that nuclear power plants were not / are not built with inexperienced work crews. My understanding is that they are. I think it’s not so much a safety issue. It’s a cost issue. As you so elequently point out, one person’s screwup can put construction back by days or weeks. Same thing happens in a nuclear power plant construction with people who haven’t done that sort of work before. This is a big reason behind the massive costs cited for today’s nuclear in the west, and it’s a large part of the difference between Vogtle / Hinkley C’s upfront costs at something like 10 USD / watt nameplate vs Praire Island which came in at under 1 USD / watt nameplate.
As far as I know, there is no significant groundwater contamination at Fukushima or Chernobyl. Yes traces can be detected, but the levels are very low and not harmful.
This is still the most irresponsible thing that I have ever heard. We have a clear and present danger now, climate change, and you’re saying that we should delay, hoping on a miracle technological advancement, when we alreadyt have the technology that can fix it.
Sorry
*Explain it to me like I’m 5 …
GoTS:
You don’t even know how bridges work, so some of us are a bit skeptical of your claims as to how anything else works.
I’m making a bit of an assumption here, but I think there is a pretty fair chance that everyone participating in this thread is well aware of your presence and arguments in other threads, and are only posting here because this is a very specific call-out thread.
we’ve all seen your gish gallops, goalpost movings, special pleadings and sophistry, as well as your just failure to answer questions. And you even have the temerity to demand apologies… I still remember when I pointed out that after repeated questioning, you retracted a claim about “greens” outspending the entire fucking petroleum industry, you objected to me bringing up that lie, as if merely admitting it was a falsehood in some drawn out comment thread somehow erased the existence of the original lie.
And, now you are back at it again, just with a truckfull of weaselwords and disclaimers.
fuck off.
or come and try and put me in the ocean, I’m in the SF Bay Area, give me a date range, and I’ll give you my availability. I’m kinda curious if I can still sink in saltwater, probably not, but maybe with your assistance?
Gots
We’ve noticed. You’ve no idea how a grid works, but repeatedly insist that it’s not possible for us to power it solely with renewable energy, despite all evidence.
Yawn.
In addition to being the headwaters of multiple watersheds, the land of 10,000 lakes has a very shallow water table. Risk assessment is part of any cost benefit analysis, but is particularly important if you are choosing the location for something like nuclear power plants. I’ve no idea what the hydrology of the Chernobyl area might be, but an accident of that magnitude here in MN would swiftly contaminate the entire Mississippi River, at the very least.
I wonder if adding numbers and simplifying further will get actual direct, answers to clear questions?
GerrardOfTitanServer please :
1) Do you accept that when it comes to stopping action on Climate Murdoch and the Fossil Fuel lobby and the Climate Science Deniers also have some blame too and how much if any blame do you apportion to them relative to Greens?
(Like even 1% vs 99%?)
2) Do you understand that Greens like other groups are diverse and have a range of differing intra-group views and some of them at least – including one of the Climate Scientists you regularly quote (Hanson see # 318) are both Greens and pro-nuclear?
3) If you ruled out nuclear power what other options are there that you think may be worth trying to replace fossil fuels instead?
4) When and why did you become so convinced that :
a) Nuclear power was the only option for tackling Global Overheating?
b) Greens not others were most to blame for stopping nuclear not other factors eg. cost, safety? (Presuming those are closely related questions?)
c) Having been told you don’t need to put links in such an awkward form for others here you’d keep doing it rather than just, putting them as bare links? (You seem to go to a lot of trouble to do things that annoy a lot of people here needlessly. Why?)
5) What exactly do you think you are accomplishing here and :
ii) what expect us all to do even assuming we become convinced by your arguements here &
iii) do you really not see that you are not only unconvincing but anti-convincing in your obsessive, hole-digging arguing here? (I.e. making those who already somewhat agreed with the idea that nuclear is part of the answer, question it more and reject it more rather than agree with you based on the flaws & evident weaknesses in your arguments and your OTT extremism.)
@GOTS 324:
So any party that opposes your One Holy Nuclear Answer is doing so because “Green ideology etc..” whether that party is actually a Green party or the Australian Democrats or the Australian Labour Party or .. any other? You want to lump, what basically all left-wing parties (hmm.. & never from you any criticism of the Deniers & action stallers of the reich wing? Suspicious no?) or all parties who don’t loving embrace and french kiss glowing radioactive waste as motivated only / mainly by some vague unspecified “Green* ideology” .. Huh?
Because its not like they might have practical concerns and their own ideas here or that the very term “Green” (defined as?) seems to be a triggering boogeyman for you.. Oh wait.
* Again “Green” specifically which is broader rather than anti-nuclear which is a more focused & seemingly applicable term.
GerrardOfTitanServer@#328:
4 are built and working as advertised. Another 4 were canceled because of reasons that I already named which have nothing to do with the design and everything to do with the hostile regulatory environment and inexperienced work crews.
One of the Chinese AP-1000 shut itself down because of a pump failure, which required replacement of the system. [world nuclear news]
That is hardly “working as advertised” unless the advertisements say “expect multimillion-dollar breakdowns”.
reasons that I already named which have nothing to do with the design and everything to do with the hostile regulatory environment and inexperienced work crews.
“inexperienced work crews” – is why there’s a hostile regulatory environment. When you’re talking about extremely expensive systems that fail expensively or are built wrong expensively, that’s not “hostile regulatory environment” that’s “we’re worried that this thing is a piece of shit” which is a problem.
What are you suggesting, that reactors built with bad concrete, flawed pump castings, etc, just be slammed into service and allowed to operate until something breaks?
You’re the one who is carefully parsing it into flaws in workmanship or regulation – I’m not. These are the reactors you pointed to as examples of reactors that are available today. I’m not looking at the details of why only half of the reactors that were purchased failed to ever generate as much power as a $3 9-volt battery even though billions of dollars were spent on them. I’m just making a fairly straightforward comparison to alternatives that, you know, “work.”
Additionally, I’m not one of those nationalists that gets all huffy about “technology theft” but it appears that the Chinese were happy to buy the Westinghouse AP-1000s so that they could clone technology:
[Hualong reactors replace AP-1000]
Now I wonder if the Hualong reactors should be counted as AP-1000 success stories.
Of course.
Hard to say. Changes over time. I’m willing to grant near 50%. It also depends on whether we want to go down the rabbit hole of asking who funds Greenpeace et al, and how much of that funding comes from fossil fuel industry, and how we want to assign blame there. So, it might be near 100% if we assign the fault of Green ideology onto the fossil fuel money which likely provides most of their funding.
Yes and no. I don’t share your understanding of the world. There are a very small minority of self-identified Green environmentalists that are pro-nuclear, but the vast majority of self-identified Green environmentalists are actively anti-nuclear and pro-solar and wind.
I’m firmly convinced that there is no plausible option right now instead of that. So, I guess it’s lots of R&D on a miracle breakthrough. Probably lots of R&D into geo-engineering as well to help adapt the planet and us to vastly increasing greenhouse gas levels.
It’s been a belief of mine for a while which has only grown with time and as I see moer and more respectable scientific experts say the same thing, and running the numbers myself and seeing other scientists run the numbers in papers, and seeing the near complete lack of honesty and integrity from basically all pro-solar wind so-called experts and basically all anti-nuclear so-called experts. So, 10 years?
About the same time.
I’ve explained this numerous times. Seemingly all FreethoughtBlogs has an automoderation setting that automatically puts into moderation any post with 3 or more embedded hyperlinks. Using html code tags avoids this.
What am I actually accomplishing? A whole lot of nothing apparently. What I wish I could accomplish? Changing minds so that we can fix these damn problems, and save a lot of lives and environment in the process from the horrors of mundane fossil fuel and renewables pollution, and also vastly improve the lives of a lot of people by raising them out of poverty.
The numerous scientific experts and sources that I’ve cited in my favor, and my previous takedowns (not in this thread) about the few so-called Green energy experts and how the most famous one, Mark Jacobson, is a liar and fraud who basically made up his numbers and results in his most important green energy paper which was and is hugely infliential among US policy makers. The numerous arguments that I’ve made myself using numbers and simple calculations. The plenty of cited realworld historical examples that show that every place that adds significant solar and wind sees significant electricity cost decreases; further, the comparison of France vs Germany to show that relying on solar and wind to solve the problem is, at least, very very hard, and solving the problem with nuclear is actually pretty easy.
I see that, but of course I disagree with the framing. The thing is – I have the leading experts and scientists on my side. If I’m an extremist, then most climate scientists are extremists too. The problem is that I don’t know how to break your semi-religious bubble that you have on this topic, and it’s extremely frustrating. Religious fanatics never see themselves as fanatics, and they can always rationalize away when the actual scientific experts call their beliefs as silly as believing in the Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy, like what James Hansen said regarding those who think that renewables are going to cut it without huge amounts of nuclear.
One does not need a conspiracy to explain a mass delusion based on shared lies. We don’t need a massive conspiracy among Catholics to answer the question “Why are there Catholics?”.
Yea. Everyone who is pro solar wind and anti nuclear believes the same set of lies, and a large reason for that is the concerted efforts by a certain cadre of anti-nuclear pro solar wind activists and NGOs, which can be directly traced back to when fossil fuel money funded David Brower to break away from the then-pro-nuclear Sierra Club to start the first anti-nuclear environmental group, Friends Of The Earth, and his buddy Amory Lovins, plus Jane Fonda and her unfortunately timed movie “The China Syndrome”. That work and their later work, and knock-off work, has created misperceptions and myths that have pervaded the world, and these myths refuse to die. The likely help of substantial funding from fossil fuel money has made the problem worse.
…
Marcus
I’m just saying that nuclear is like any other industry. When we start building lots of units with the same design and same workers, costs will go down. All of the recent nuclear power plants in the west are new designs, first of a kind designs, and with new work crews. That’s why costs are so high. Once we start building lots of them, costs will go down, just like what we have seen before in France and in South Korea. It’s just like any other industry in this regard.
Of course not.
Typo. Fix:
>The plenty of cited realworld historical examples that show that every place that adds significant solar and wind sees significant electricity cost decreases increases
Also Marcus
When I used the phrase “hostile regulatory market”, I didn’t just mean regarding nuclear power plant safety and construction standards. I gave a lot of other reasons that have nothing to do with nuclear power plant construction and operation standards, or radioactivity at all. Here’s a brief recap. You should like it Marcus because it’s all sorts of fun games where capitalists carefully create a system where they win and the end consumer loses.
In many places in the US, and some other places around the world, there are mandates in place for X% of electricity to come from Green sources, where “Green” is explicitly defined by law to exclude nuclear power. These are often known as renewable energy portfolio standards. That’s a huge financial penalty on nuclear power.
In many places, there are merit order rules for which electricity must be purchased first, or rules that require grid operators to purchase the cheapest electricity according to spot market prices instead of long term purchase agreements. Add this to the fact that nuclear power plants don’t save money by scaling back production from 100% to 50%, and one can easily derive that adding solar and wind will often increase total grid costs (because the grid operator has to buy electricity from solar and wind when available, leading to nuclear to increase its prices for the rest of the day to cover its fixed costs), and these cost increases are passed on to the end consumer instead of the solar or wind operator.
In many places, solar and wind operators receive huge subsidies for producing and “selling” electricity, even at negative spot market prices. These are often known as renewable energy credits. Hard for nuclear to compete against that.
These above facts combine to produce even more financial strain on nuclear power compared to the simple sum of their separate effects. Increasing amounts of soalr and wind displace nuclear power electricity that woudl have been cheaper for the end consumer, eventually leading to nuclear having to reduce output so low that it’s forced to shut down by the physics of the reactor. Worse in America at least, most nuclear power plants were not build to load follow (saves a little bit of money compared to nuclear power plants that are, like in France), and so when they shut down, the physics of the reactor, the xenon, typically forces the reactor to stay shut down for hours or even days. So, the period of negative prices from the glut of solar and wind (subsidied by renewable energy credits and renewable energy portfolio standards), nuclear can either keep operating and eat the negative prices, or it can shut down and potentially miss the next few hours after that where solar and wind could be out of the market. Either way, nuclear loses lots of money, and the end consumers end up footing the bill of increased prices.
Most energy markets pay capacity payments to some generators to remain online and ready to ramp up. Typically simple single open cycle gas turbines are used for this. Keeping a gas turbine ready to go within seconds means that they have to constantly burn fuel without selling electricity. To fincancially motive them to be ready to respond to drops in demand, they are paid money to do so, called capacity payments. Adding more solar and wind typically means paying more capacity payments to natural gas. It’s so bad that in a non-trivial number of places, gas operators earn more money from capacity payments than they do from selling electricity. The additional capacity payments required by solar and wind are passed on to end consumers instead of being properly assigned to the solar and wind operators.
Solar and wind typically require more transmission compared to other power plants. This costs a lot of money. This cost is passed on to the end consumer instead of being assigned correctly to the solar or wind operator.
Solar and wind don’t provide grid inertia. This leads to destabilization of the grid in some places, like Germany and some parts of Australia. It also will eventually lead to the requirement of synchronous condensers, discussed upthread, which are expensive. These costs are being passed on to the end consumer instead of being assigned correctly to the solar or wind operator.
Solar and wind don’t provide blackstart capability. Eventually, if we build enough solar and wind, we’ll need to build dedicated diesel generators and boilers to be able to blackstart the grid. I’m sure that those costs will be passed on to end consumers. Equivalently, the additional value of the blackstart capability of conventional generators is not valued by current markets.
tl;dr The entire so-called “deregulated market” has been carefully crafted in order to divert money to useless leaches like solar and wind, and their buddies in natural gas, at the expense of nuclear power plant operators and end consumers. Solar and wind are largely just giant scams to divert money from most consumers to the people rich enough to invest in solar and wind without adding anything of substantial value.
Marcus
One more thing. Many household appliances are not terribly sensitive to voltage/frequency swings, but a lot of industrial equipment is much more sensitive to voltage/frequency swings. In Germany, the grid is experiencing a lot more voltage/frequency swings which are lot more severe. Some of these industries have to invest in additional equipment to both guarantee supply and guarantee supply without such disturbances. That’s another cost which is just being passed on to the end consumer which ought to be assigned to the solar and wind operators.
Without being deeply versed in grid operations, it’s hard to explain how serious these concerns are. Most people still labor under the misapprehension that electricity is a commodity and not a service. Slightly more enlightened people understand that electricity is a service, but fail to appreciate everything that goes into maintain that millisecond by millisecond uptime on that service, which includes more than just bulk energy delivery, but also frequency and voltage regulation.
Random links:
https://new.abb.com/news/detail/15996/the-importance-of-power-protection-for-modern-industries
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/germanys-green-energy-destabilizing-electric-grids/
@ 340. GerrardOfTitanServer :
Thanks for answering those. I may respond in more detail later.
As noted before I find it extremey implausible – put mildly – to think that fossil fuel companies would fund an organisation that regulularly strongly opposes them. I just don’t believe that.
FWIW, just googled and from their site :
Source :
https://www.greenpeace.org.au/donate?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Brand+%7c+Phrase+%7c+SN&&bucket=Donation&source=GGP-BRD&src=GGP-BRD&gclid=Cj0KCQjw5oiMBhDtARIsAJi0qk3MT4ZgEaPV_OQjjxMFRifuP3edzNCA9LNuMw5nKELZ53GmgN0YTyYaAkWYEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds
PS. See also :
https://www.greenpeace.org/eu-unit/funding-and-transparency/
https://www.greenpeace.org.au/faqs/
& https://www.google.com/search?q=Greenpeace+funders+%2C+donors&rlz=1C1CHBF_en-GBAU834AU834&oq=Greenpeace+funders++%2C+donors&aqs=chrome..69i57j33i160l2.6153j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
https://www.electranet.ElectraNet.com.au/what-we-do/projects/power-system-strength/….(emphasis mine)
It further states……
So, $166 million Aussie dollars to shore up the network and allow greater penetration of renewables into the energy market. Seems to me to be bargain basement deal of the century (21st not GoDs mid 20th).
And, according to the Clean Energy Regulator here in Australia we are sitting on 11.3GWe of renewable energy projects either in progress or soon to be commissioned, at a total capital cost of AU$18.9 billion.
Last I heard the 2 reactors at Vogtle were going to come in at US$25 billion for a total output of 2GWe when complete. My guess is that because this plant is in the USA there is a lot of grifting going on.
If the USA cannot make nuclear power cheap then I would suggest that nobody can. Looks like the nuclear industry itself is as anti-nuclear as Greenpeace.
And hasn’t GE already successfully performed black start of a gas turbine using a battery?
https://www.ge.com/news/press-releases/hybrid-solutions-ge-completes-first-battery-assisted-black-start-ge-heavy-duty-gas
You will find that utility-scale hybrid PV inverters have black start built in. If the one you are buying doesnt, you shouldn’t be buying it. This is the 21st century you know…you fucking 1980s luddite.
StevoR
Many of the pro-nuclear groups that I know actually publish a list of their funders. Greenpeace and most other Green NGOs don’t. Why is that? We just have their word that they vetted their sources. None of your sources categorically reject donations from foundations and similar groups which come from people invested in fossil fuels. The Australian Green party says most of its money comes from private donors – which donors are those? Could they be individuals with large fossil fuel investments? We just have them at their word, and their word is valueless to me. Let them publish their tax returns.
Again, I don’t know how many times I have to say this, but look at what Green politicans and parties actually do when they come to power. For Australia, they keep illegal the only real competitor to fossil fuels, thereby protecting fossil fuels. In Germany, they shut down nuclear power plants, and built new coal plants, and built new natural gas pipelines from Russia, and the German chancellor who oversaw this is now getting money from the Russian natural gas company Gazprom. In California with Jerry Brown (the first time), they stopped a bunch of new nuclear construction, and instead started construction on new coal power plants. The second time, IIRC it was more gas instead of coal.
If you believe like I do and like the leading climate scientists that the only plausible alternative to fossil fuels requires a bunch of nuclear, then it makes perfect sense for fossil fuel companies to give lots of money to Green NGOs and politicians because they know that the first thing that they’ll do is shut down nuclear, and that in order to keep the power on, they’ll build more coal and natural gas, just like they’ve always done.
Also, making money in commodity markets is not as simplistic as you think it is. To the extent that Greenpeace et al are successful at stopping new fossil fuel extraction, this increases scarcity, which often raises the value of people already in the market. It’s complicated. Pushing startup competitors out of the market can be a great thing for the capitalist.
…
tuatara
You’re comparing apples to oranges. You’re probably comparing nameplate to namteplate, which is ignorant (or dishonest) because one of them has a 90+% capacity factor, and the other typically has a 30% capacity factor. You’re also comparing intermittent undispatchable unreliable electricity to dispatchable reliable electricity. Again, electricity is not a commodity. It’s a service.
Re blackstart.
Let me try to explain.
The problem of synchronization is hugely important for grid blackstart and which doesn’t exist in isolated home systems because there’s only one inverter-based generator, or in much much smaller numbers in the case of a microgrid. That’s the difference. You’re inappropriately extrapolating from something you know, the electrical system of your house, to the grid, which is one of the most complicated machines ever built by humans.
Historically, all generators on the grid used large spinning masses that were directly physically (electromagnetically) connected to the grid and to each other. During blackstart, one needs to ensure that the waveforms are synchronized as they’re attached to the grid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronization_(alternating_current)
https://cdn.selinc.com/assets/Literature/Publications/Technical%20Papers/6459_FundamentalsAdvancements_MT_20120402_Web2.pdf?v=20191007-203006
Briefly, there is a direct physical (electromagnetic) force that connects the spinning mass of a steam turbine generator and the electrical waveform of the grid. This naturally keeps all of the generators spinning in the same phase with the same frequency. By contrast, inverters just don’t work like that. Think of an inverter as an electrical switch which takes DC current and produces AC current by changing the direction of the current every ~10 ms by connecting and disconnecting electrical switches. That’s how you get AC current from DC current. The inverter is “simply” an electrical switch that rapidly changes the direction of the DC current to produce AC current. There is no direct physical feedback from the grid waveform to control the rate of switching. Instead, the time and rate of switching is controlled by electronics. This lack of a direct physical feedback force means you don’t get the same synchronizing effect.
So, how does solar and wind work on the grid now? 100% of these inverters work in “grid following mode”. Their electronics detects the waveform on the grid, and they regulate the switching to match it. That works fine when there’s a lot of synchronous generators on the grid, but it won’t work without the synchronous generators, and it won’t work to bring the grid up from complete shutdown because of that lack of a feedback force to synchronize the switching of the inverters.
This is an active area of research, and there are no answers on how to do this with inverters, or if it’s even possible.
So, it seems like most renewables plans will need a bunch of backup diesel generators and boilers in order to bring up the grid, to create an initial stable waveform, so that the inverter-based generators can follow it, and to brign up other synchronous generators to maintain that waveform and/or use the steam generators of said boilers to maintain the waveform. Either way, this is a cost which is never included but which should be.
See also:
An actual list of donors:
https://environmentalprogress.org/missionSources with evidence concerning the financial conflicts of interest of many Green groups. Notably, they don’t have evidence for Greenpeace, but they also make the same observation that I did that, even if you assume Greenpeace is being honest about their list of donors, they could easily be taking lots of money from fossil fuel interests.
https://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/4/19/greater-transparency-by-environmental-groups-is-neededhttps://environmentalprogress.org/the-war-on-nuclearThey have a lot of dirt on other orgs, like NRDC:
https://environmentalprogress.org/nrdcAgain, the entire Green energy movement appears to have been started by a combination of forces, including fossil fuel interests spending money on “useful idiots” to attack their only real competitor, plus neo-Malthusian true believers, plus scummy liars who are in it for the huge financial benefits that shutting down nuclear power plants can bring. Like any other religion, it’s a giant scam run by several different factions with different but (temporarily) aligned goals.
Regarding outright lies from the leaders of Greenpeace, how about James Hansen citing some and calling them out? See here:
https://environmentalprogress.org/south-korea-greenpeace-letter
The f’ing leader of Greenpeace, the executive director, made the claim that nuclear produces large amounts of CO2 emissions. That’s villainy of the highest order.
And yet you trust this organization. Gods know why.
No one has to trust Greenpeace to know you’re full of shit, Gerrard. Notice how NONE OF US are relying on anything said by Greenpeace to debunk your unhinged dishonest claims?
Raging Bee
Are you also labeling Dr James Hansen, Dr Kerry Emanuel, and other climate scientists, as “unhinged” and “dishonest”?
The honesty of scientists is not in question. The cost of their solution is untenable, so other solutions are currently supplying the current.
Japan is an example of a grid that suddenly couldn’t cope because of an unprecedented natural disaster that led to the nuclear plant failing. It’s unusual in that they have both 50hz and 60hz systems.
I note that GOTS link about Germany’s 50hz grid problems causing fluctuations is from 2013.
Both Germany and Japan have had to alter their grids to make them deliver electricity via wind power without the frequency issues.
Necessity proves it can be done, and it IS being done without building new nuclear. HVDC. Google it.
You might think reality would enter into GOTS mental outlook, but he is oh so “enlightened” about power grids that can’t imagine himself out of 1960.
*snort* Such a pompous blowhard.
Gerrard, your comments are unhinged, dishonest and full of shit whether or not someone else said them first.
https://www.hitachi.com/New/cnews/month/2021/04/210401b.html
Raging Bee
I would think that saying many / most leading climate scientists are unhinged and dishonest would cause you to pause, at least for a little. That should be something that makes you start asking more questions about what you currently believe.
Tethys
This is just another example where you don’t understand the technical aspects at all. I’m talking about AC synchronization, blackstart capability, and grid inertia and frequency and voltage disturbances, and I explained in great detail how inverter-based resources don’t help. And then you cite HVDC transmission, which is an inverter-based resource. I think you’re just not bothering to actually read what I’m writing – instead skimming just enough to google for a rebuttal that you don’t understand.
I’m still waiting for you to explain like I’m 5 how it makes sense to compare the costs of a nuclear power plant which is capable of powering 1 million homes to the costs of a certain amount of rooftop solar which is “capable” of powering 900 homes.
Here in Australia going nuclear is simply NOT an option we can entertain. Nuclear power is currently banned at the federal level. So, we are transitioning to renewables because we dont have any alternatives with which to build generation to reduce our emmissions. In fact we are doing so in spite of a federal government that is hostile to renewables because, unlike Greenpeace, they ARE funded by the fossil fuel industry.
In fact, the Australian federal government says “gas, gas, gas, gas, ga……..”
And here, GoDs says “nuclear, nuclear, nuclear, nucl…..”
Fucking idiots.
The other option that we have is reducing our energy demand with efficiency improvements, or simple and obvious stuff like dont install a fucking jacuzzi! (treating energy as a commodity that should be conserved wherever possible so that it is available for essential needs).
What we are finding, after allowing the really smart people to look, is that a grid based on renewables is not only achievable, it is affordable too. In fact we cannot afford to NOT do it.
So, option 1. Let the smart people work on the problem while we introduce renewables into grid immediately, thereby doing good by our small pacific neighbours who’s homes are rapidly disappearing beneath the rising tides.
Option 2. Start building nuclear everywhere without doing anything now, and wait a couple of decades before anything actually happens, meanwhile carrying on with our coal and gas based economies, and say “fuck you, losers” to the people in the pacific and other low-lying coastal areas suffering the same fate (not to mention all the eathlings – oceanlings perhaps – who need ocean acidity and tenperature to be lower).
Option 1 is the only morally sound choice I can consider.
Option 2 is the one taken by the racist colonialist.
Again lol, you lying shit. Take your demands for me to explain it yet again and fuck off with them.
Luckily Hitachi not only understands the technical aspects of grid stability, it just finished installing the necessary equipment to supply wind power to regions of Japan that are not going to be getting new nuclear to replace the capacity that was erased by the disaster. (Which is explained in detail at that link gots clearly didn’t read before spouting more stupidity.)
Yet another real world example of green energy being the cheapest way to (in this case) quickly replace lost nuclear capacity.
Gerrard The Blowhard:
Missing detail: it’s being done profitably by batteries since 2017 in my home state, elsewhere since then as the realization catches on that yes, grid batteries with suitably programmed inverters do work as advertised.The 2017 grid battery has paid for itself with delivered FCAS duties and in 2021 many more have been built to stabilise an increasingly renewables based grid in Australia. Worldwide, multiple factories capable of multiple GWh of battery production annually are being built, all at the bequest of the eeevil green cabal, as Gerrard sez while crying into his bowl of irradiated corn flakes.
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All before a single new nuke plant hits the drawing board.
Footnote: a long thin peninsula near home that happens to be leg and foot shaped has on it a number of small towns and farms only as consumers. As it’s a windy place, it got a wind farm many years ago. It’s connected to the main grid by a single HV AC power line so outages due to storms are fairly common. So a modest sized battery was built with a grid forming inverter that now serves the local communities. Inputs are wind and rooftop solar, main grid when available, battery as backup. Yet Mr Goofy tells us they should just go full nuke in xx years time.
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For anyone interested, it’s the Dalrymple battery on the Yorke Peninsula.
Lofty
If you did your research, or even bothered to read this thread, you would find out that they’re planning on constructing synchronous condensers in Australia as well. You would also find out that it’s still a relatively open question whether the grid could be brought up from blackstart, and whether the grid could be stable, when a majority or all of the generators on it are inverter-based. There is some cutting edge demonstrations happening in Australia at several grid batteries, but it’s far from proven, and the Australian regulator is still evaluating it AFAIK. To say that this is settled science is premature. It might work. It might not. I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does for sure.
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tuatara
They better change that law then. It’s easier to change a law of legislation than it is to change a law of physics or engineering.
And what smart people are you talking about? Are they “smarter” than Dr James Hansen, Dr Kerry Emanuel, Dr Tom Wigley, Dr Ken Caldeira, and the many others that have devoted large portions of their professional lives to studying these problems? I’m naming my experts and citing my papers. Curious that you are not naming yours.
Lofty
Yea. I was just reading about that. Interesting stuff. Note that this is still a very different proposition. Smaller (micro)grids and large grids are very different things. It’s very inappropriate to extrapolate from one to the other. Again, the problem is about synchronizing many grid-forming inverters on a single grid. No one is questioning the ability of grid-forming inverters on microgrids.
Gerrard, don’t assume that I’m ignorant just because I don’t post a wall-o-text every time I log on. I’m perfectly aware that my state’s grid has now had four syncons operating for around one month, unlike big batteries that have been around for a few years. As for the ability of inverters to operate in different modes, I’m sure that someone else has thought of that and added that to their remotely accessible abilities. They aren’t the only solution, simply one available solution in a complex larger grid.
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I’d rather trust the information coming from qualified electrical engineers at the cutting edge of grid design than a random nuclear booster with no credibility posting on a small blog somewhere.
Argument from reality wins over argument from the opinion of a bunch of white guys with science degrees.
Simply because something works on paper does not guarantee that it will work when you try to build it. Engineers are great, but some of their designs are simply unworkable or can be achieved with far less ‘moving parts’ so to speak. You don’t discover all the bugs until you actually try to build it and get it operating.
Lofty
Ok. So, hopefully you agree with me now that grid-forming inverters replacing all synchronous generators on a grid is hypothetical and huge practical questions remain on how to do it and if it can be done at all. I agree that this is not a blocking problem because they could use synchronous condensers. I never presented it as a blocking problem. I presented it as just another aspect of the problem that is never included in cost comparisons.
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How funny. Tethys is making my argument for me, except they’re incorrectly mixing up the two proposals. The nuclear proposal is well proven and shown to work in reality. The 100% renewables exists only on paper with lots of significant questions remaining about how to fully implement it.
Oh gots, liar liar pants on fire. (Since you are now 5) Japans recent installation of HVDC would appear to contradict your entire premise.
Why isn’t the world leader in nuclear power building new nuclear, if it’s the one true solution to generating electricity?
Apparently the state of MN is a world leader in the area of converting trash to electricity. Good to know, I had no idea just how successful the results of banning new landfills has been.
How does the installation of a HVDC line contradict anything that I’ve said? I’m so confused.
The HVDC is how the grid is able to cope with all those issues of frequency and voltage you were enumerating. You cited a paper about that topic in Germany, but it’s old and out of date because technology has improved since 2013.
Japan itself is what contradicts your nuclear only premise. They are the foremost nuclear experts worldwide, but they went to offshore wind and a HVDC station. Why would they do that, if nuclear was as simple and safe as you claim it is?
GOTS is talking to the voices in his head again I see. Never mind, I’m not interested in wrestling proverbial pigs any more.
I still fail to see how installing some HVDC lines between grids where most generators are synchronously generators has anything to do about my claims about when most or all generators on the grid are inverter-based generators.
Why would they not just build nuclear? Because they believe the same misinformation that you do.
Lol, a nuclear meltdown is now ‘misinformation’. I guess the citizens of Japan also weren’t harmed by dropping bombs on them, because nuclear is completely harmless according to myopia man.
Re Fukushima, no one was harmed by the radiation. Basically all of the topsoil was unnecessary. Basically all of the evacuation was determined to be unnecessary after the fact. Example of a prominent environmentalist who became pro nuclear because of Fukushima.
https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuclear-japan-fukushima
As for nuclear weapons, why are you bringing those up? Why are implying that I said that nuclear weapons are harmless? Especially when I’ve stated many times that I worry about the spread of nuclear weapons?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sofialottopersio/2021/11/04/no-one-died-from-radiation-at-fukushima-iaea-boss-statement-met-with-laughter-at-cop26/
The area around Fukushima will be uninhabitable for at least100 years.
It’s hard to die of radiation exposure if you drowned first, you callous piece of shit.
This is simply not true, just like it’s not true for Chernobyl either.
Oh please. There is no one who died from drowning who would have died from radiation if they avoided drowning.
The real catastrophe was the tsunami. The nuclear reactor accident was quite minor in comparison.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sofialottopersio/2021/11/04/no-one-died-from-radiation-at-fukushima-iaea-boss-statement-met-with-laughter-at-cop26/
Yea. Met with laughter because people are so grossly misinformed – just like you.
Here’s a little something I found from that article:
Tepco won one case in May because the plaintiff, who had worked on removing debris from the Fukushima complex between July and October 2011, developed three cancers between 2012 and 2013, whereas government guidelines stipulate the minimum latency period for a disease to develop following radiation exposure is five years.
Think about that: that plaintiff lost because he’d got THREE different cancers, TOO SOON after the accident to qualify under government guidelines. So it could be argued that these guidelines can be used to cover up the full extent of the harm done by radiation from a nuclear accident.
Raging Bee
Perhaps I should have pulled a quote from the link, but it just takes too much effort to do that on this device for me to bother spoon feeding the troll. Clearly Gots couldn’t even be bothered to literally lift a finger and click the link
It was very depressing to read that Japan is actively suppressing the cleanup workers health claims.
Additionally, there have been issues with the elderly evacuees not being given adequate extra cancer screening tests since their exposure.
The results have been an increase in advanced cancers that are no longer treatable, but also do not fall within the arbitrary time period that Japan is using to claim that the radiation was magically not harmful. Nope, nothing to see here.
1.24 million tons of contaminated water is just one of the issues Japan is currently facing. It’s all currently stored on site, and they are running out of space to put storage containers. (Not to mention that judging from the video at the link, a severe storm could easily sweep some of those containers out to sea) The cleanup itself is just beginning.
https://www.science.org/content/article/ten-years-later-here-s-what-fukushima-s-damaged-reactors-look-today
If you want, we can continue this pissing match where I cite credible science-based sources, and you guys site sensationalist news stories. I guess I’ll continue to play this game of whack-a-mole, but I’m afraid that both of you / all of you are too emotionally invested in this mistruth to admit to yourself that it’s basically all lies.
For example, you could drink the tritium contaminated water stored at Fukushima directly from the storage tanks and nothing else for years, and you would likely be fine. The calculations showing this are easy and straightforward. I can show sources and calculations if you like. The easy and obvious solution is dilution and dumping, which is guaranteed to harm no one and nothing.
Re the one person who died from cancer attributed to Fukushima. No, he didn’t get cancer from Fukushima.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2018/09/06/no-the-cancer-death-was-probably-not-from-fukushima/Source please. I’ve heard of the opposite – lots and lots of health screenings, which have led to spurious claims like “Fukushima caused an increase in thyroid cancers”.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5770131/PS: Re the claim that the exclusion area around Fukushima is uninhabitable for 100 years. That’s simply false.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-daiichi-accident.aspxSee also:
https://www.pnas.org/content/111/10/E914Please ignore the LNT health risk estimates, and look only at the exceedingly small doses that are being recorded by actual personal dosimeters. The highest actual dose received was about 7 mSv / year (“1.2 mSv/2 mo”), which is less than what everyone living in Colorado naturally receive (almost entirely from natural radon). If we should maintain the evacuation from Fukushima, then we should also evacuate all of Colorado, e.g. it’s absurd.
The source is right there, red letters. Click-read-Fuck off.
Yeah, Gerry, we could keep on arguing with you. Or we could just note that you’ve said more than enough hyperemotional, hateful, asinine and blatantly dishonest shit to sink your credibility far below the groundwater to where it will never be dug up again; and stop wasting any more time listening to your obsolete bullshit. You can name-drop and cite scientists all you want, but: a) scientists aren’t always the best at understanding how (or even if) their theories, ideas and conclusions work in real-world situations (that’s where engineers, technicians, etc. come in); and b) as we’ve already repeatedly explained to you, citing scientific papers doesn’t override or erase real-world experience.
Oh, and you still haven’t explained why the Soviets went to so much trouble cleaning up around Chernobyl, if there wasn’t anything really dangerous to be cleaned up. That’s all I need to conclude that you’re either an ineducable idiot or a malicious lying hack. Buh-bye.
Re:
https://www.science.org/content/article/ten-years-later-here-s-what-fukushima-s-damaged-reactors-look-today
So, not a peer-reviewed source. Also, no claims in this article itself. Going to the linked article.
https://www.science.org/content/article/physician-has-studied-fukushima-disaster-decade-and-found-surprising-health-threat
So, again, not a peer-reviewed source. Looks like a simple blog or news article. The style is that of a news post or editorial. Digging further into the website and its organization, AAAS, does nothing to change my initial assessment that this is just an editorial.
It’s really telling that you’re citing a personal narrative instead of proper scientific evidence.
Also, it’s supporting my narrative. Did you even read it? Ex:
It also shows that the stress of the (needless) evacuation killed far more than radiation did. Ex:
It supports my narrative entirely, except for one or two spots like this spot:
One anecdote to the contrary, and “anecdote” is not a synonym for “data”. There was another person cautioning about low-level radiation exposure as well, but no links to studies or evidence, and my links to actual experimental and large-group high-statistical-power epidemological studies trump your anecdotes.
Seriously – did you even read it?
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Why does it matter if the levels in the areas with original topsoil have safe levels of radiation now? Why dwell on those irrelevant decisions when today’s facts are available? And I never said that Chernobyl was harmless. I agree that the initial evacuations from Pripyat were required. However, is the exclusion zone still required today? Possibly not / probably not.
PS:
But of course, I’m not surprised that you’re buying into conspiracy theories. When the actual scientific evidence completely contradicts your preconceptions, all you have left is conspiracy theories.
This might be a dangerous if not necromantic place to ask, but there is a question that’s been on my mind regarding the downside of nuclear power. To wit: conventional reactors produce toxic waste. This waste is toxic because it is highly radioactive, which means it is emitting some combinations of alpha and beta particles and gamma radiation.
But: isn’t that the same property (if not same extent) that makes the conventional fissionable plutonium and uranium valuable? Radioactivity is a kind of energy being thrown off. Why, then, is the waste from a conventional fission reactor regarded as ‘spent’ and treated as dangerous waste, instead of being an input to another stage of energy capture? It would be not nearly as impressive, of course, but we’re stuck with the stuff and no one geothermal tap or windmill is impressive either.
@abbeycadabra
Whoever invents a way to use spent fuel rods to produce energy will be extremely wealthy.
In true western/wasteful/dunderhead fashion, we only extract a small amount of the potential energy from a nuclear fuel rod, and then are left with a health hazard that is beyond our technical ability with uranium and plutonium.
https://www.pnnl.gov/news-media/recycling-gives-new-purpose-spent-nuclear-fuel
So now GerrardofTitanicStupidity is saying the Soviets’ response to the Chernobyl disaster is “irrelevant?” Yet another obvious good reason to dismiss that idiot and stop wasting any time with him.