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A victory against NIMBYs

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  • You think this is settled? You underestimate rich NIMBYs.
  • This matter settled, think you. Underestimate the power of the NIMBY, you do.
  • While I appreciate the sentiment and, to a lesser extent, the neccesity of these types of projects, I still get angry that we got to the point we are at. It's a scientific Nerd Rage I suffer when discussing this kind of topic.

    The moment solar energy can exceed efficiency of fossil fuels this all but becomes a moot point. In my mind, every other "alternative" energy source (read : Not fossil fuel or coal) is a shitty band-aid.
  • Wind energy is solar energy...
  • By the reasoning I think you are taking, so is fossil fuel. What are all these tree-hugging hippies complaining about again?
  • I have no idea, you're talking to a guy who burns gasoline for fun.
  • Yeah, wind power really generates very little electricity.
  • Nuclear power is what we should be striving for. LFTRs in every city in America.
  • edited April 2010
    Yeah, wind power really generates very little electricity.
    Ditto that for solar, while it's sufficient for smaller applications, it's far to inefficient and expensive to realistically scale up at this point, or any point in the very near future. The largest solar power plant that exists today is absolutely feckin' enormous in acreage, with a massive, massive amount of solar panels, and it produces...drumroll please...60 Megawatts, peak output.
    A large Nuclear power plant, for comparison, will put out approximately 1000 Megawatts consistently, 24/7, with a much smaller physical footprint.
    Post edited by Churba on
  • A large Nuclear power plant, for comparison, will put out approximately 1000 Megawatts consistently, 24/7, with a much smaller physical footprint.
    I heard from an old ship engineer that we could knock down one of our old reactors and put four modern cores in their place.

    I say we endeavor to take over a city in America or Europe then re-name it "Future City" and let peoples build awesome in it. Basically, just take over and be flaming liberals.
  • I say we endeavor to take over a city in America or Europe then re-name it "Future City" and let peoples build awesome in it.
    The problem is speed. In the time it takes to build something like a nuclear power plant, we will develop the technology to make one that is far superior. At what point do you build?

    You're playing Civ 4. You need some military. You can build a pikeman in 5 turns, but you'll have gundpowder in three turns. Do you build the pikeman, or save for a musketeer?
  • edited April 2010
    Poor example. You build the pikeman, and then upgrade it.
    If it wasn't urgent, you'd wait since the upgrades are expensive, but you need the unit ASAP if the situation is analogous.
    Post edited by lackofcheese on
  • Yeah, wind power really generates very little electricity.
    Ditto that for solar, while it's sufficient for smaller applications, it's far to inefficient and expensive to realistically scale up at this point, or any point in the very near future. The largest solar power plant that exists today is absolutely feckin' enormous in acreage, with a massive, massive amount of solar panels, and it produces...drumroll please...60 Megawatts, peak output.
    A large Nuclear power plant, for comparison, will put out approximately 1000 Megawatts consistently, 24/7, with a much smaller physical footprint.
    I addressed this in my first post on this. The efficiency isn't there now but there is progress being made in leaps and bounds. The long term goal should be an effectively limitless energy supply which only solar can give us. Before anyone cites fusion, I would say that solar is more ideal because of the safety factors that a fusion reactor would pose.
  • Obama is pushing nuclear power hard these days. Last week, his administration was pushing numbers that wind power makes up only two percent of our gross power output, but is getting billions at the federal level. They were pointing to France as a progressive nuclear adopter, and making moves to get footing for the first reactors that would be built in the US in decades.
  • They were pointing to France as a progressive nuclear adopter, and making moves to get footing for the first reactors that would be built in the US in decades.
    YES. All the trains in France run on reactor power. It's about time we get ourselves some bullet trains and a ton of clean energy.
  • Also, Obama wants to vastly expand offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and near the Berring Strait. Weren't we just opposed to this a few years ago?
  • I doubt solar technology is ever going to exceed the energy capacity of fossil feuls. The technology has improved, but not by a whole lot. Think of how much enrgy is in a pound of coal. Solar can't compete with that. Nukes are the way to go.
  • What exactly do you mean by "energy capacity"?
  • Energy production capacity.
  • Think of how much enrgy is in a pound of coal. Solar can't compete with that.
    It'll take a 100% efficient one square meter solar cell two and a half hours to produce as much energy. Of course coal never burns ideally and solar cells are not 100% but all in all I'd say Solar can keep up quite nicely.

    The real problem with solar (and wind) is evening out load and production (water does it via reservoirs), for large scale installation compressed air is a good option and for consumer scale deployment batteries are already good enough (and getting better in a hurry).
  • edited April 2010
    The question is this: what constraints did Kilarney have in mind? If we're talking about competition, we're talking about which is more efficient in one sense or another - space efficiency, cost efficiency?
    Post edited by lackofcheese on
  • edited April 2010
    Time is also a factor in this discussion. A lump of coal will make a certain amount of energy. No more, no less. A solar cell has no linear comparison to the lump of coal. You can measure the energy cost to produce that cell and then project it's expected output over it's operational lifespan. Short term? Coal wins. Long term? Solar cell wins. If the world wasn't so energy hungry, solar would be a fine, legitimate option but as of now it's unrealistic.

    @lackofcheese - I only think space is a factor at this point because of the present inefficiency of solar cells. Once that efficiency ramps up, the answer to the space concern becomes a no brainer.
    Post edited by Dromaro on
  • edited April 2010
    Yeah, time was also one of the things I had in mind in my earlier post. The distinction between energy and power is obviously important.
    Post edited by lackofcheese on
  • edited April 2010
    Short term? Coal wins. Long term? Solar cell wins.
    Actually, Long term, Nuclear wins. A reactor, over the time span of the lifetime of a solar farm's set of panels - assuming every panel was installed at the same time, and isn't broken or damaged in any way - will output far more energy. And if you're thinking of saying "Yes, but the Fuel will run out eventually", don't bother, it's a pretty moot point - At current estimations, we have enough fuel to power the entire planet with Breeder and Fast Breeder reactors - where the technology is currently heading - for at least the Next 5 billion years. Solar power won't have much hope beyond that either, frankly, because in about 5 billion years, the sun will be entering the red giant phase, and at that point, things are looking pretty shaky for the earth. That is definitely the point where you'd want to be thinking about a summer home. On Another planet.
    Post edited by Churba on
  • If the world wasn't so energy hungry, solar would be a fine, legitimate option but as of now it's unrealistic.
    I don't even think it is the energy hunger that much, but that the incumbent systems and policies are not necessarily up to the task of letting alternatives grow.
  • At current estimations, we have enough fuel to power the entire planet with Breeder and Fast Breeder reactors - where the technology is currently heading - for at least the Next 5billionyears.
    There are a lot of assumptions behind that statement about ore discovery, availability, extraction efficiency and cost. Given similar liberties I could claim that the world could be fuels by kittens on treadmills for 5 trillion years (well maybe not exactly but you get the point).

    What I consider a much more promising avenue of investigation is fusion power, which has none of the problems that fission has regarding the obtaining, enriching, and cleaning up /storing waste, of fuel. Sadly the US withdrew from the most promising international effort during the recent financial crisis in an effort to save some pennies.
  • There are a lot of assumptions behind that statement about ore discovery, availability, extraction efficiency and cost. Given similar liberties I could claim that the world could be fuels by kittens on treadmills for 5trillionyears (well maybe not exactly but you get the point).
    I'm not the one making any assumptions - Breeder reactors: A renewable energy source, American Journal of Physics, vol. 51, (1), Jan. 1983, Bernard Cohen. However, He does neglect a few important points, such as the 4.46 billion year half life of Uranium, nor the fact that breeder reactors can also run off thorium, which is far more abundant than Uranium - He concentrated on the extraction of uranium from seawater
    Seawater contains 3.3x10^(-9) (3.3 parts per billion) of uranium, so the 1.4x10^18 tonne of seawater contains 4.6x10^9 tonne of uranium.
    and of course, could not have considered the large deposits that have been found since 1983 all around the world, particularly Australia.
    Also, I don't think you're taking into account how efficient breeder reactors are - unlike normal reactors, which consume about 1% of the initial fuel put into them, a breeder reactor, with some re-processing of the fuel, will consume almost all of the initial fissionable materiel given to it.

    Cost? Well, Tell me, from Dirt to end of life cycle, how much do solar panels cost? Significantly more than Uranium or thorium fuel for reactors, I'd wager.

    As for fusion, we have the problem that the tech simply isn't there. We could start building breeder reactors tomorrow, if we wanted, but fusion reactors? Not so much.
  • France is already running breeders, I believe. Churba's predictions have actually been echoed by a lot of publications; Wired had an awesome article on the potential of nuclear a while back, and had similar figures.
  • Cost? Well, Tell me, from Dirt to end of life cycle, how much do solar panels cost? Significantly more than Uranium or thorium fuel for reactors, I'd wager.
    First off, the fissile fuel is a very small part of the cost of nuclear energy so comparing the infrastructure expense of solar to the fuel costs of nuclear makes no sense. The price of solar panels was $4.50 per Watt in -98 and I assume it's lower today. To match current estimates of nuclear power at 4.5 cents/kWh you'd have to run the panel for 400 days, or assuming 8 hours of daytime per day, for 3.5 years.

    What irks me in the debate about nuclear power's price is that the costs of doing it right are seldom taken into account. What is the price of safely storing nuclear waste for a year, ten years, fifty? It is very basic physics that nuclear decay can not be accelerated on an industrial scale yet, you may be able to do it in a lab but not for the 27 tonnes of waste generated yearly.
    According to a 2007 story broadcast on 60 Minutes, nuclear power gives France the cleanest air of any industrialized country, and the cheapest electricity in all of Europe.[67] France reprocesses its nuclear waste to reduce its mass and make more energy. However, the article continues, "Today we stock containers of waste because currently scientists don't know how to reduce or eliminate the toxicity, but maybe in 100 years perhaps scientists will... Nuclear waste is an enormously difficult political problem which to date no country has solved. It is, in a sense, the Achilles heel of the nuclear industry... If France is unable to solve this issue, says Mandil, then 'I do not see how we can continue our nuclear program.'" Further, reprocessing itself has its critics, such as the Union of Concerned Scientists.
    Then there are concerns about how much area a nuclear power plant needs. In the US you have all the space you want, but here in Europe population density is quite high and studies such as these
    Baker PJ and Hoel D (2007) Meta-analysis of standardized incidence and mortality rates of childhood leukaemia in proximity to nuclear facilities. European Journal of Cancer Care. 16, pp 355-363. July 2007.

    BfS (2007) Unanimous Statement by the Expert Group commissioned by the German Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) on the KiKK Study (in German, no English version available) 5 Dec 2007. www.bfs.de/de/kerntechnik/papiere/Expertengremium.html

    Kaatsch P, Spix C, Schulze-Rath R, Schmiedel S, Blettner M (2008) Leukaemia in young children living in the vicinity of German nuclear power plants. Int J Cancer. 2008 Feb 15; 122(4) pp 721-6.

    Spix C, Schmiedel S, Kaatsch P, Schulze-Rath R, Blettner M (2008) Case-control study on childhood cancer in the vicinity of nuclear power plants in Germany 1980 – 2003. Eur J Cancer. 2008 Jan; 44(2) pp 275-84.
    Show clear increases in cancer rates due to vicinity of nuclear power plants. So in order to be safe, a nuclear power plant should occupy much more land than they currently do. Then you have even more studies of the effect on the local biotopes, which again raises the question of nuclear plants not cooling waste water sufficiently, etc. etc.

    Not only are all these costs and the risks associated with storage hard to estimate and usually absent in cost analysis, but the overall hypocrisy of claiming nuclear to be clean energy boggles my mind. I mean, I like nuclear power, it is possibly cleaner than other fossil alternatives but the fact that it may be limitless for all intents and purposes should not stop anyone from trying to find even better solutions.

    Comparing incredibly unreliable price estimates and even more unreliable carbon footprints in the debate about nuclear vs renewable is ultimately a red herring. I base my preference on the simple fact that one produces waste and the other produces highly toxic waste.
  • Another concern with nuclear power is the cooling of reactors. To use the President's example of France, they are running into problems being able to cool the reactors owing to higher temperatures which raise water temps (as discussed in this NPR piece). Combine the higher temperatures with water scarcity issues and cooling nuclear reactors will become increasingly difficult.
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