Future of Energy Generation

[kdt]

Its clear that combustion has to go as our primary source of energy generation. The long term effects are the expensive 'invisible' costs despite the low cost of production. What do you see as the future of energy generation, if we remove our current 85% energy production from combustion? Solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, biomass, etc.

[TheWraith]

1. I would expect primarily nuclear and wind with a side of hydro.

Hydro is by far the most preferable form of power generation: extremely simple in design, very reliable, and assuming you have decent engineers, almost idiot proof. Unfortunately, unless we want to start damming up a lot of rivers that we currently let flow free, we're limited in the amount of it we can generate, and damming up rivers has it's own special set of ecological and economic problems. Hydro doesn't scale well.

While solar power sounds abundant on the face of it, the numbers don't add up--to harvest enough to replace our electrical demand, you'd need to cover an area with solar cells that's greater than all developed areas of the planet Earth.

Wind is based on the same basic technology as hydro, though it scales a lot better. The problem is it's unreliable, so you have to overbuild it, and it's subject to a lot of NIMBY nonsense.

People get twitchy about nuclear power, but it's very energy dense, reliable, and the new plant designs are fairly foolproof. Plus Europe has long since figured out what we couldn't or wouldn't, which is that recycling spent fuel rods eliminates waste and provides new fuel.

Biofuels will have some play for keeping existing combustion driven stuff running, mostly vehicles, but those will be gradually replaced by superior electrically driven vehicles, and I don't see biofuels ever really being used for electricity generation.

I expect that the two leading sources of energy going forward are going to be wind and nuclear, with a sub-minority coming from hydro. Economically speaking, there's not really much else that works.

[kdt]

2. Thanks

I am still dipping my toes in the water in this subject so its great to hear from those more versed in this. I was suspecting a combination of wind, water and solar to be the optimal solution--at least gradually lightening the load off combustion.

I never understood completely the point of biofuels as "renewable" since it is also combustion. Thermal does not sound like a useful plan as of yet.

Nuclear is a controversial one, since the Chernobyl incident not much has been in the news regarding nuclear power, although aircraft carriers use nuclear energy without problem. Nuclear war seems to be the main danger that is unavoidable:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/09-6

[DrGregory]

12. Nuclear weapons and nuclear power only share "nuclear"

Nuclear is a controversial one, since the Chernobyl incident not much has been in the news regarding nuclear power, although aircraft carriers use nuclear energy without problem. Nuclear war seems to be the main danger that is unavoidable:
----------------------------------------------

Chernobyl is for nuclear power, like the Hindenburg was for air travel.
Both were very flawed designs; and nobody built any more of them.

In addition to the 13 nuclear carriers, we also have 18 Trident
nuclear submarines, and a host of nuclear driven fast attack subs.

Nuclear power does NOT beget nuclear weapons, nor nuclear war.

EVERY country that has nuclear weapons developed the nuclear weapons
BEFORE they developed nuclear power plants.

Dr. Greg

[Nederland]

18. Unfortunately you are wrong

EVERY country that has nuclear weapons developed the nuclear weapons BEFORE they developed nuclear power plants.

Unfortunately that is not true. I say unfortunately because while you and I realize that the two are not logically connected, a small number of small brained people around here will relish in telling you that you are wrong and proving it with a link or two. I wish you could edit your post to correct it, but the time has expired.

BTW, the exceptions are India and Pakistan.

[DrGregory]

68. Afraid NOT!!

BTW, the exceptions are India and Pakistan.
============================================

India was working on nuclear weapons back in the '70s
when they didn't have any nuclear power plants. They
did have "research" reactors which were used as
production reactors.

Similarly with Pakistan, the nuclear weapons program
in Pakistan also preceded their nuclear power program.
The Pakistani nuclear weapons program didn't bear fruit
and yield an actual weapon until after they had nuclear
power plants.

The point here is whether a nuclear power program BEGETS
a nuclear weapons program. The answer to that is a clear
NO!!

Nations make decisions to develop nuclear weapons first,
and then develop nuclear power expertise as an offshoot
of the weapons program. It is not the other way around.

Dr. Greg

[kristopher]

77. ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=261464&mesg_id=261983

[DrGregory]

69. Additionally..

BTW, the exceptions are India and Pakistan.
=============================================

India and Pakistan didn't develop their nuclear power plants.

They BOUGHT them.

Dr. Greg

[TheWraith]

23. To place an appropriate analogy...

Civilian nuclear power can be used to produce nuclear bombs--in the same way that a metalworking shop can be used to produce machine guns. It's theoretically possible, but it's so far outside the normal capabilities of the tools as to be a non-issue, since there's easier ways of building both.

[kristopher]

73. That isn't what MIT says

Proliferation: nuclear power entails potential security risks,notably the possible misuse of commercial or associated nuclear facilities and operations to acquire technology or materials as a precursor to the acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability. Fuel cycles that involve the chemical reprocessing of spent fuel to separate weapons-usable plutonium and uranium enrichment technologies are of special concern,especially as nuclear power spreads around the world; (p. 2)

Nuclear power should not expand unless the risk of proliferation from operation of the commercial nuclear fuel cycle is made acceptably small. We believe that nuclear power can expand as envisioned in our global growth scenario with acceptable incremental proliferation risk, provided that reasonable safe-guards are adopted and that deployment of reprocessing and enrichment are restricted. The international community must prevent the acquisition of weapons-usable material, either by diversion (in the case of plutonium) or by misuse of fuel cycle facilities (including related facilities,such as research reactors or hot cells). Responsible governments must control,to the extent possible,the know-how relevant to produce and process either highly enriched uranium (enrichment technology) or plutonium. (p. 12)

-MIT STUDY ON THE FUTURE OF NUCLEAR POWER

The problem is buried in these two paragraphs, but the study fails to detail the issue sufficiently.

The problem arises when we confront the fact that there is no authoritative international body that has policing power over rogue states. There is no international entity that, when a country decides it wants to achieve "energy independence by building facilities to enrich its own fuel. Until and unless such an entity with the appropriate authority is created that can over-ride a sovereign nation's claim that controlling its fuel supply is essential to its energy security, there simply exists no mechanism that can prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons by nuclear power states wishing to acquire them.

It should be absolutely clear from the example of how hard is is coming to a voluntary binding agreement about controlling greenhouse gases that the chance of creating a policing authority that can overrule claims of sovereign autonomy is nil. Therefore, the chance of controlling the spread of nuclear weapons based on the hypothetical existence of such an entity is also nil.

[bananas]

24. Good article, thanks.

There's a lot of denial here about the problem of nuclear weapons.
Actually, there's a lot of denial about all the problems with nuclear energy.

Biofuels are considered renewable because they grow back; non-renewables are things that, once you use them, they're gone. Biofuels are considered carbon-neutral because plants take CO2 out of the air to make the fuel, so the CO2 released from burning is the same CO2 that was in the air before, there's no net gain of CO2 in the atmosphere. Biochar is carbon-negative, because you partially burn the plant, then bury the rest, sequestering the CO2 in the ground.

[kdt]

29. Main issues with nuclear energy

Then what are the real, main reasons? Seems like a lot of stuff I read is very biased and a distortion of the truth. The only definite con that I can discern is what to do with nuclear waste (talks of the waste getting in the wrong hands...weaponry?)

[TheWraith]

33. Nuclear waste cannot efficiently be turned into nuclear weaponry.

It would be far more difficult than simply enriching new uranium in the first place.

Frankly, the problems with nuclear power have been greatly exaggerated, in large part with the help of the coal and oil industries. Someone you'll see cited a lot around here is a guy named Amory Lovins, who's been a leader on the anti-nuclear bandwagon since the 1970s. He advocates the idea that nuclear power is the worst possible thing, and basically that solar panels and compact fluorescent lamps will take care of our energy problems. What people who cite him don't like to admit is that the corporations which fund his little "think tank" are overwhelmingly those that benefit from fossil fuels. He's in the employ of, among others, BP, Shell, Walmart, Exxon Mobil, and a lot of others.

Actually the founder of Greenpeace publicly rejected his own anti-nuclear activism a few years ago and apologized for it, because he'd come to the conclusion that the world needed nuclear power in order to have clean energy.

[kdt]

36. coal produces mroe radiation than nuclear

here's a little bit i found saying radiation is not an issue. in fact, coal is a bigger problem.

http://www.visionofearth.org/industry/is-most-radiation-from-nuclear-power/

[TheWraith]

38. More accurately, coal RELEASES more radiation than a nuclear plant.

The nuclear cores are highly radioactive, but they're tightly controlled. Coal has only trace radioactive elements, but they're dumped straight into the environment, along with the non-radioactive but still highly toxic byproducts in the smoke and ash.

[bananas]

40. That analysis is wrong

Just look up the radiation released by TMI and Chernobyl,
each of those are many times the radiation released by coal,
Chernobyl is several orders of magnitude larger.
That analysis also omits radiation released by uranium mining and milling and routine releases by nuclear power plants.

[Nihil]

41. Throwing in the "C" word is the equivalent of Godwin-ing the thread

> Just look up the radiation released by TMI and Chernobyl,
> each of those are many times the radiation released by coal,
> Chernobyl is several orders of magnitude larger.

The use of "blah, blah, Chernobyl, blah" usually means that the person
is running out of valid arguments (and, hence, has lost the debate)
but you really didn't need to do that as you were about to point out
a perfectly valid criticism of that report:

> That analysis also omits radiation released by uranium mining and milling

The radiation released by mining (both in terms of poor conditions and from
the lack of care about tailings) is a very valid issue and, in the process
of fairness, it should have been addressed as it *does* affect the situation.

That said, the "process of fairness" would have also recognised that the
comparison was of the radiation (strictly speaking, the radioactive products)
released to the outside world between a normally operating coal plant and a
normally operating nuclear plant.

:shrug:

[kristopher]

43. Chernobyl is a valid part of the picture.

Why is it the nuclear industry thinks they get to exclude from the discussion anything that reflects poorly on them?

Chernobyl HAPPENED - the radiation WAS RELEASED.

It KILLED PEOPLE.

While the SPECIFIC cause of Chernobyl has been eliminated, the possibility of ANOTHER Chernobyl SCALE failure is very real.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x261466


The caps are just for you.

[GliderGuider]

45. Do you have a quantification for the PROBABILITY of another Chernobyl-scale disaster?

Anything is POSSIBLE. If we want to do coherent risk-benefit analysis, we need to know the PROBABILITY. that way we can put it up against the probability of competing risks, and make a rational, objective decision. Possibilities play to our emotions, probabilities speak to our reason.

For instance, let's say the probability of at least ten species going extinct within the next year due to global warming is 99.99% and the probability of another Chernobyl accident in the next year is 0.001%

In that case which risk should we be trying to mitigate?

Note: The numbers are for illustrative purposes only, actual quantifications may vary.

[kristopher]

48. A "coherent" benefit cost analysis isn't possible for nuclear.

How do you evaluate the cost of the consequences? For example, if northern NJ, New York City, and the Hudson Vally becomes uninhabitable due to the failure, what are the consequences for the United States?

If destroying a couple of downtown buildings nearly crippled the nation, what would be the effect of the above scenario.

Most nuclear power plants in the US are located in close proximity to population centers.

ETA: And this entire line of argumentation ignores the fact that nuclear is an INFERIOR CHOICE for addressing climate change. There are other, better options.

[GliderGuider]

59. Oh yeah? well, I disagree! And furthermore...

Wait a sec...


Huh, I just stopped giving a shit.

Imagine - just like that.

Huh.

Here, have a chocolate wind turbine....

[bananas]

49. I was just typing it in - see post #47. nt

[Nihil]

80. "Chernobyl" is only part of the "fuck me I'm stupid" picture for anti-science morons.

> Chernobyl HAPPENED - the radiation WAS RELEASED.
>
> It KILLED PEOPLE.

Big fucking whoop.

People die every fucking day. So what?

Compare it to other causes of death in the same time period.

How many people died from car accidents?

How many people died from (legal, prescription) drug problems?

How many people died from emphysema brought on by coal pollution?

How many people died from obesity-related issues?

People die. That's the unavoidable side-effect of living.
Get used to it - it happens and there is absolutely fucking nothing
that you can do about it.

Learn about proportions. Learn about relative risks.

When you do, you will have an epiphany about why I simply don't care
about a few people dying in one particular event.

If I was going to be concerned about such one-off items then
I would be fighting tooth and nail against any project on this
planet that involved damming a river. If you are so prepared to
ignore Banqiao then I am prepared to ignore Chernobyl.

[kristopher]

83. Like all the "nuclear environmentalists" you are prepared to ignore...

...and hide any and all information that reflects negatively on nuclear power.

Nuclear sucks and is nothing more than a way for the entrenched power interests to screw the world just like they have with fossil fuels.; get over it and stop carrying their water - it's heavy.

[Nihil]

86. Proportions. Relative risks. Scale.

As I said earlier,
>> When you do, you will have an epiphany about why I simply don't care
>> about a few people dying in one particular event.


The total lack of interest in the Banqiao event from "anti-nuclear environmentalists"
explains precisely why I (and, presumably, other "(pro-)nuclear environmentalists")
am prepared to "ignore" Chernobyl instead of run screaming to the mountains
flat-topped & toxic hills as soon as someone mentions the N word in my company.


> Nuclear ... is nothing more than a way for the entrenched power interests
> to screw the world just like they have with fossil fuels.

There is a risk of that. There always will be a risk that the tiny clique who are
currently in charge of most things will continue to do so, despite whatever plans
are made by those in opposition. On the other hand, growing the demand for natural
gas supplies doesn't exactly remove funding from them either yet this is another
thing that is completely glossed over by certain parties around here.

:shrug:

[bananas]

47. Nope - one in ten odds of another Chernobyl

According to MIT's "The Future of Nuclear Power":

Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) identifies
possible failures that can occur in the reactor,
e.g., pipe breaks or loss-of-reactor coolant flow,
then traces the sequences of events that follow,
and finally determines the likelihood of their
leading to core damage. PRA includes both
internal events and external events, i.e., natural
disasters. Expert opinion using PRA considers
the best estimate of core damage frequency to
be about 1 in 10,000 reactor-years for nuclear
plants in the United States.
...
Potentially large release of radioactivity from fuel accompanies
core damage. Public health and safety depends
on the ability of the reactor containment to prevent
leakage of radioactivity to the environment. If containment
fails, there would be a large, early release (LER) and
exposure of people for some distance beyond the plant
site boundary,with the amount of exposure depending
on accident severity and weather conditions. The probability
of containment failure, given core damage, is about 0.1.

If those estimates apply to the roughly 440 reactors world-wide,
then we can expect a TMI-scale event roughly every 23 years:
10,000 reactor-years / 440 reactors = 23 years
Chernobyl was 24 years ago ... tick tick tick ...
If they try to keep all those reactors running for another 20 years,
then we can pretty much expect another TMI-scale accident,
with a 1 in 10 chance of it being more a Chernobyl-scale event.
And that's with "normally" operating nuclear power plants.

[GliderGuider]

57. All right, now we're talkin'!

Bring on the three-headed fish.

Wait. Wait.

I'll get my serious face back on here in a second...

Ah, there.

Now, what were you saying about wormwood?

[kristopher]

61. .

[Nihil]

79. Off we go then ...

Given that the clock has been running for a damn sight longer with respect
to the non-nuclear radiation poisoning from the coal industry and the
free pass that the most virulent anti-nuclear people continue to give that
party ...

Once Chernobyl every 23 years then?

OK ... tick, tick, tick in turn ... there is a lot of "back story" to catch
up on in the "radiation pollution" stakes before I have to worry about the
chances of another "Chernobyl" ...

[bananas]

53. Here are the numbers for coal, TMI, and Chernobyl

http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

Thus, by combining U.S. coal combustion from 1937 (440 million tons) through 1987 (661 million tons) with an estimated total in the year 2040 (2516 million tons), the total expected U.S. radioactivity release to the environment by 2040 can be determined. That total comes from the expected combustion of 111,716 million tons of coal with the release of 477,027,320 millicuries in the United States. Global releases of radioactivity from the predicted combustion of 637,409 million tons of coal would be 2,721,736,430 millicuries.

A millicurie is 1/1000 curie, so that's 2.7 million curies released by all coal burning worldwide through 2040.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident

The Three Mile Island accident was a partial core meltdown ... resulting in the release of up to 481 PBq (13 million curies) of radioactive gases

So TMI released about 5 times as much radioactivity as all coal burning worldwide through 2040.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2010/2010-04-26-01.html

Yablokov and his co-authors find that radioactive emissions from the stricken reactor, once believed to be 50 million curies, may have been as great as 10 billion curies, or 200 times greater than the initial estimate, and hundreds of times larger than the fallout from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

So Chernobyl released between 20 and 4000 times as much radioactivity as all coal burning worldwide through 2040.

[txlibdem]

70. I like how you compare the normal day to day operation of coal with a one time disaster

That might skew the results of your comparison a bit. According to the link you provided, coal emits (in its normal operation) 100 times the per person radiation dose of nuclear power plants (also from normal operation). This is called an apples to apples comparison. It might be useful to you to know that term in the future.

Here's another tidbit that might interest you:

Every day, coal companies in Appalachia use over 4 million pounds of explosives to blast the tops off densely-forested Appalachian Mountains.

That's more explosive power than the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-cooper/boulder-from-mountaintop_b_279374.html

Gee, Mister Coal Industry Man, it sure seems like blowing up the equivalent of a Hiroshima atomic bomb each and every day can't be good for the environment.

Now let's forget that the radiation exposure you list is from the 1% of the stuff that escapes out the smokestack.

During combustion, the volume of coal is reduced by over 85%, which increases the concentration of the metals originally in the coal. Although significant quantities of ash are retained by precipitators, heavy metals such as uranium tend to concentrate on the tiny glass spheres that make up the bulk of fly ash. This uranium is released to the atmosphere with the escaping fly ash, at about 1.0% of the original amount, according to NCRP data. The retained ash is enriched in uranium several times over the original uranium concentration in the coal because the uranium, and thorium, content is not decreased as the volume of coal is reduced.

There is a "green" apartment building in New York City that touts its use of coal ash as an environmentally friendly use for the coal ash. I'd want to go through that place with a geiger counter before I rented.

But let's compare disasters with disasters if that's what we're doing. The recent toxic spill in Hungary has been all over the news but most people do not know that it was only a little over half as big as the coal slurry toxic spill in Kentucky!

With seven dead so far and at least 120 injured, the 184-million-gallon spill of toxic muck from a Hungarian alumina plant has already proven more dangerous than what's known as the Inez (eye-NEHZ') disaster.

But the mess in Kentucky was considerably bigger — some 300 million gallons of slurry, a byproduct of purifying coal, oozed into yards and streams for miles in what was considered one of the South's worst environmental disasters at the time.

And a decade later, its effects linger.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jvwI07uAn7QJ0uvbYNgmpERomHfgD9IP0VP01?docId=D9IP0VP01

There are 285 of these coal slurry ponds in the US alone:
"Since the 2000 disaster, there have been 22 coal impoundment spills at Massey-owned sites, according to the Coal Impoundment Location and Information System, a database kept by Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia. Most were minor, and none approached the size of the release at Inez.

There are 285 active slurry ponds in 11 states, according to the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. More than half are in Kentucky and West Virginia, and with another 71 in Illinois and Pennsylvania."

[joshcryer]

74. It's of note that the vast majority of TMI's radiation was regionized...

...and that coal radiation, while likewise regionized, is far more relevant than any nuclear radiation. The EPA's radiation calculator gives you 3 times as much radiation for living near a coal plant: http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/understand/calculate.html

(Though they are both far below ones regular dose of radiation simply for existing.)

[bananas]

85. No, I compared ALL coal burning to TWO "one-time" disasters and we're due for a THIRD

And I didn't even bother to include all the radioactive releases as part of the normal operations of nuclear power.
Get this through your head: nuclear power has already released orders of magnitude more radioactivity than coal burning ever will. Do you know what "orders of magnitude" means? It means you're just repeating silly nonsense from the Republican war on science.

And I'm no "Mister Coal Man", I'm one of the few people who've been posting about the coal protests,
and if you really are against coal as you claim, you'd be surprised at the negative reaction they get here.
Here are some threads I've posted or replied to, read through them and see the replies - some positive, some STRONGLY negative, some just get crickets in response:

Gore urges civil disobedience to stop coal plants http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3509639
(and be sure to read posts 11,12,13)

NASA's Chief Climate Scientist Stirs Controversy With Call for Civil Disobedience http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x188535

Susan Sarandon: Join climate action civil disobedience March 2 at Capitol Coal Plant in DC http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x272681

Dr. James Hansen calls for Civil Disobedience at the Capitol March 2nd http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x273552

Live from DC: Thousands Converge for Capitol Climate Action Against Dirty Coal http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3763723

Congressional leaders: Capitol Power Plant should stop burning coal http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5143386

Daryl Hannah and James Hansen arrested protesting coal - pics and video http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x199763

Journalist tells story of arrest while filming a mountaintop removal civil disobedience action http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6543372

[bananas]

39. MIT categorized four problems: cost, safety, proliferation, and waste

In 2003, MIT published a report called "The Future of Nuclear Energy".
It examined what would be needed for nuclear energy to maintain its share of the energy pie,
growing to about 1000 GW by 2050, about three times as much as it generates now.
They concluded that, for that limited amount, fuel supply would not be a major problem,
but cost, safety, prolifeation, and waste would be major problems.
Unfortunately, they severely underestimated the costs in their analysis.
They acknowledged this in their 2009 update, but even their updated cost estimates are way too low.

Cost has been the real show-stopper, and is the #1 reason the nuclear industry collapsed in 1974.
The new reactor designs were supposed to be cheaper, but they're not.
Warren Buffett said "due diligence process has led to the conclusion that it does not make economic sense".
The CEO of Entergy said "the numbers just don't work".
The CEO of Exelon said it won't make sense to build them for at least ten or twenty years.
Entergy and Exelon are two of the largest US nuclear power companies.
When they say "the numbers just don't work" you should listen,
because they and the nuclear industry and the DOE and the Republicans in Congress have tried every which way to make the numbers work, with all kinds of crazy creative accounting.
But still, "the numbers just don't work".

And, according to MIT, cost is just one of the major problems...

[GliderGuider]

42. So if the costs are too high they won't be built. Case closed.

There is no good technical reason to oppose nuclear power, even when when the risks of waste, proliferation and leaks are put in perspective against the threat of global warming. GW is the biggest threat humanity has ever faced, bigger even than the threat of nuclear war. But if the costs are bad the bankers won't finance nuclear power, and all the public education in the world won't change that. (Though it's odd that other countries seem to have lower costs, since they're actually building the stuff.)

Anyway, that little problem is taken care of. On to the next problem -- like what the heck are we going to do with all those little CO2 molecules floating around in the air. Oh yeah, and choosing cheaper energy sources that will actually be built...

Whaddya mean, more coal??? :banghead:

[kristopher]

44. You are pushing for governement funding of nuclear or mandates are you not?

With money that can be FAR more effectively spent on other technologies.

[GliderGuider]

46. No, I'm not. Whatever gave you that idea?

I'm utterly agnostic on the funding sources.

[kristopher]

50. You did.

When you call for the use of nuclear power in spite of market failure of the technology, what the hell is it you are advocating for?

You cannot possibly be that naive.

[GliderGuider]

54. I have my instructions

The instructions from my overlords at the Nuclear Evangelical Institute are to refrain from taking a consistent position on anything for very long. It keeps the masses confused, and makes them more vulnerable to our insidious machinations.

Nuclear power is a terrible idea! The risks are incalculable, and virtually every other energy generating technology is safer than nuclear power. The purpose of promoting nuclear power is to impede all other technologies that are superior. Hell, have you ever seen a CO2 molecule with your own eyes?

Nuclear power? Pshaw. A distraction, a threat, a massive inconvenience, a brightly coloured plaything for techno-children.

The NEI told me there were a lot of people out here on the net who take this stuff Very Very Seriously. I am under orders to search them out and confuse them. I tried, boss, I really really tried. But as hard as I try, I find that

I

Just

Can't

Take

Any

Of

This

Shit

Seriously

Any

More.

...

Seriously.

Enough with the earnest concerned environmentalist schtick.
Enough with the pontificating greybeard schtick.
Enough with the shit-disturbing contrarian schtick.
Enough with the wild-eyed doomer schtick.

Enough.

It's time to have some fun.

[glitch]

88. Edit: sorry, responded before I got to your apology to the thread. nt

[bananas]

51. No, nuclear war is a bigger threat.

The famous Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of American Scientists puts nuclear war as the #1 threat to humanity, followed by global warming and GM goof-ups.
Al Gore has also placed global warming "alongside" nuclear war as the biggest threats to humanity.

http://www.thebulletin.org/content/doomsday-clock/overview

It is 6 Minutes to Midnight



The Doomsday Clock conveys how close humanity is to catastrophic destruction--the figurative midnight--and monitors the means humankind could use to obliterate itself. First and foremost, these include nuclear weapons, but they also encompass climate-changing technologies and new developments in the life sciences that could inflict irrevocable harm.

[GliderGuider]

56. Actually the biggest threat of all is

clowns.

Nuclear war? It pales in comparison to a really big pair of shoes and a nose that honks.

Nuclear war? Yawn. Clowns? Run for your lives!!!!!!

[Nederland]

62. Damn Straight

Clowns WILL kill us all...

[bananas]

52. It's a big problem if the Repubicans turn it into a trillion dollar bail-out.

because then we don't get the nukes or the renewables, just a huge fucking debt.

[TheWraith]

25. Biofuels as "renewable energy"

You're right, it is a bit of a strange idea to view synthetic fossil fuels like, say, biodiesel as "renewable." The idea is that you're re-using the same amount of carbon over and over again--plants grow, and soak up CO2 as they grow. Then they're burned, or they're converted into liquid fuel which is burned, and the carbon is released. But you're not adding any "new" carbon to the atmosphere, which is what the problem is with fossil fuels. Every pound of coal, gas, or oil that's burned releases carbon into the air that was never there before--it was trapped underground in a form that couldn't escape. Now we freed it, brought it to the surface, and converted it into CO2.

And as an aside, we've been avoiding nuclear war just fine for more than half a century, though much worse dangers than we face today. I wouldn't worry about it.

[GliderGuider]

3. That sounds approximately right to me.

Though I expect that long before we get to that point, our civilization -- which is built on combustion energy -- would experience some ... ummm ... difficulties.

[joshcryer]

5. "you'd need to cover an area with solar cells..."

"that's greater than all developed areas of the planet..."

What? That's the most absurd thing I've read on E&E.

[Dead_Parrot]

6. The most absurd thing?

Poor old Nordell. So quickly forgotten...
;)

[joshcryer]

7. Heh, fair enough.

Nordell was pretty absurd...

[kdt]

8. ?

What is Nordell?

[Dead_Parrot]

9. Be grateful you missed it...

'Twas a bizarre theory that global warming wasn't caused by the greenhouse effect, but by the atmosphere being opaque to infra red radiation thus trapping all the heat from volcanoes and power stations. This means, for instance, that Plank's law is junk and satellite IR pictures (the sort used for weather forecasting) don't exist.

Needless to say, it was hilarious.

Welcome to DU, by the way... :hi: Re nuclear power, I'd advise you to not have an opinion of any sort - it only leads to trouble. ;)

[kristopher]

10. “GLOBAL WARMING IS GLOBAL ENERGY STORAGE”

GLOBAL WARMING IS GLOBAL ENERGY STORAGE

Bo Nordell and Bruno Gervet
Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Luleå University of Technology
SE-97187 Luleå, Sweden,
[e-mail]; [e-mail]

ABSTRACT
The global air temperature increase is an inadequate measure of global warming, which rather should be
considered in terms of energy. The ongoing global warming means that heat has been accumulating since
1880, in air, ground, and water. Before explaining this warming by external heat sources the net heat emissions
on Earth must be considered. Such emissions, from e.g. the global use of fossil fuel and nuclear power, must
contribute to global warming.
The aim of this study was to compare globally accumulated and emitted heat. The heat accumulated in air
corresponds to 6.6% of the global warming, while the remaining heat is stored in the ground (31.5%), melting of
ice (33.4%), and sea water (28.5%).
It was found that the net heat emissions 1880-2000 correspond to 74% of accumulated heat, i.e. the global
warming, during the same period. The missing heat (26%) must have other causes; e.g. the greenhouse effect,
natural variation of the climate, and/or underestimation of net heat emissions. Most measures already taken to
combat global warming are beneficial also for current explanation, though nuclear power is not a solution but
part of the problem.
Proceedings of the Global Conference on Global Warming-2008 (GCGW-08)
6-10 July 2008, Istanbul, Turkey
Paper No. 454

Nordell thinks our accounting models for AGW underestimate the effects of heat from thermal generation. He posits the possibility that the observed heating to date is more probably attributable to the thermal discharge of fossil and nuclear. The implication is that the forcing cycle of CO2 is only starting to ramp up and that the situation is possibly much worse than has been recognized.

The pronuclear contingent here saw the obvious negative impact such a finding will have on nuclear power if true, so they initiated a one of their typical campaigns that are long on distortion and ridicule yet very short on actual content.

His work is beyond my capacity to evaluate, but it was presented at the Global Conference on Global Warming-2008 (GCGW-08)
6-10 July 2008, in Istanbul, Turkey and was selected as one of the three best papers at the conference.

Text of award follows:

Best Paper Awards:
Three best paper awards were given to the papers selected from the
accepted and presented papers at GCGW-2008.
The selection criteria are:
a) its strong contribution to the key fields of the Conference,
b) its technical content, quality and originality, and
c) communication of its results in an exemplary style with strong
organization, appropriate discussion of prior works, and general clarity
and integrity.
The selection was made by a panel formed from some of the International
Advisory Committee members with a double-blind peer review process. The
awards were presented during the conference banquet.
The award winning three papers for GCGW-2008 are:
• “OPTIMAL PATHS OF CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION AND
ADAPTATION UNDER CERTAINTY AND UNCERTAINTY”, T.
Felgenhauer, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
USA
• “CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS ON REGIONAL MAIZE YIELDS AND
POSSIBLE ADAPTATION MEASURES IN ARGENTINA”, M. I.
Travasso, G. O. Magrin, G. R. Rodríguez, S. Solman, M.
Núñez, Instituto de Clima y Agua, Argentina
• “GLOBAL WARMING IS GLOBAL ENERGY STORAGE”, B. Nordell, B.
Gervet, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden

An iteration of the paper was published a couple of years earlier and received criticism that was apparently not taken very seriously by conference attendees. In spite of their obvious limitations, the nuclear power enthusiasts here are sure they know more than the conference participants. My opinion is that they are focused more on the threat the paper might pose to nuclear than any actual understanding of the implications of the paper itself.

[Dead_Parrot]

11. Sigh. Me and my big mouth.

[joshcryer]

15. I know, right?

It does illustrate that the Nordell follower really is a denialist.

[GliderGuider]

58. Like this?

[joshcryer]

14. A guy with a theory who thinks that human waste heat, which is less than solar variation...

...is responsible for global warming.

Basically, a denialist piece of garbage that has effectively zero scientific merit.

[TheWraith]

22. Why is it absurd? It's the truth.

You'd need to cover about 3% of the Earth's landmass with solar cells to supply all our energy needs. That's a tiny bit more than the percentage of the planet's surface that hsa been built over.

People grossly underestimate how BIG this planet is.

[NickB79]

32. I think you needed to define "developed" more specifically

Developed to some people means just the land mass that's been paved and asphalted over, while to others that could mean the amount of land we've cleared for farming and mining as well.

[TheWraith]

34. Developed = built up areas.

Cities, suburbs, villages. Skyscrapers, shopping malls, houses.

[kdt]

35. rooftop is sufficient

is that what you are implying here, or mainly fields/farms of panels?

[TheWraith]

37. All rooftops would not be sufficient.

Even if you covered every city anywhere in the globe.

For a sense of perspective, US demand would be met by an area of solar panels 216 miles on a side. That doesn't sound like much, until you realize that it's almost 47,000 square miles, or roughly half the size of Nevada.

[kristopher]

55. 20% of residential and all appropriate commercial rooftops would be plenty.

[TheWraith]

66. He says without a shred of evidence, hoping people will take him on faith. nt

[kristopher]

67. Ahem...

Your "facts" are always made up bullshit and your documentation is nonexistent - completely nonexistent.

I'm the guy you always bitch about making all the cut and paste posts, remember? That's because I actually DO document most of the things I say with primary sources from the academic literature.

[joshcryer]

71. There are 60 thousand square miles of pavement in the USA alone.

That's just 10 thousand square kilometers shy of the 171 thousand square kilometers North America (in its entirety) would need at a mere 8% efficiency.

Your statement is utterly fucking absurd. If I were to count agriculture in any sort of calculation about "developed world" we'd have twice as much developed land area than we'd need for solar power.

[joshcryer]

4. Primarily CSP and solar-photovoltaic, with wind here and there.

[kdt]

13. Why wind/water/solar (and maybe nuclear) and not everything else?

Can you guys briefly explain why these (or whatever combination you pick) are the most feasible for the future, and why the others are not?

And to the water voters, what aspect of water power?

[joshcryer]

16. Well, for one, I don't think biomass is a good approach.

I think it's OK as far as food waste, andwhatnot, but as far as actually growing agriculture for fuel, I don't like it. It's epically less efficient than directly converting photonic energy to electricity, and future vehicles ideally will be electric, allowing us to be even more efficient still.

I put wind lower down on my list of energy providers, though.

[Dead_Parrot]

20. There's a few that go nicely together

Wind + hydro, for instance: Wind has issues with variability, even if you hook a bunch of farms together - if you look at a current wind speed map (here is one in knots) you'll often find pretty large areas with not much going on (At the time of writing, for instance, there's practically no wind down the entire US east coast). Hydro is the only on-demand renewable we have, so it might be worth destroying a few valleys to make it work.

Nuclear + solar actually go quite well together (although the respective supporters tend to undergo matter-antimatter annihilation if brought within arm's reach): Nuclear rumbles away producing the 'base load' (the amount of power that always get used, even at this time of night) while solar is generally good at the 'peak load' (the extra we use during the day when we're doing stuff). There's a slight mis-match, because the highest point of energy usage is as it gets dark, but there are some molten salt solar thermal plants that should cover this.

I'm with josh of being leery of biofuels: I'd rather see electricity used for transport where possible, and 100% synthetic fuels for applications that still need hydrocarbons.

Geothermal makes a good baseload, although there's limited scope for deploying it: Should be done where possible, though.

Wave & submerged hydro (ocean current or river) look interesting, but I don't they'll be ready for large-scale deployment in any sort of useful timescale. Same goes for fusion.

What we end up with will probably be a mish-mash of most of the above...

[bananas]

21. I think Joe Romm has it right

If we're going to stop global warming, it will look something like this: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x191961
He goes into a lot of detail on his blog.

If we're not going to stop global warming, then we're going to burn a lot more fossil fuels.

There are a couple of dark-horse candidates for clean energy.

One is polywell fusion, there's a small group working on Bussard's designs, hopefully they'll have some good news in a year or two.

Another dark horse is space-based solar power. China thinks they can get the cost way down by 2030. Even if they can't it'll probably be cost-competitive with nuclear power. There are a number of groups working on it, there should be a couple of prototypes launched this decade.

[joshcryer]

26. If Polywell and space based solar power are our dark horse solutions...

...then we're fucking doomed.

The only real solution that I can think of is a self-reproducing hive factory in the NM or AZ deserts, that builds out enough solar power facilities using raw soil in a matter of years. US could be free of fossil fuels in a very short period of time, and it'd have a very low cost.

Otherwise I cannot think of any sociopolitical movement toward renewable ends without magic tech.

[kdt]

28. care to explain?

Very confused as to your solution here. Dumb it down a little, please? :)

[joshcryer]

63. You put up a factory in the desert that can take raw soil and make solar panels out of it, using...

...mere sunlight. Basically, aluminum and silicon (glass aluminum coated mirrors) are two of the most abundant elements in the earths crust, so it's perfectly feasible.

Check out the paper "Exponential Growth of Large Self-Reproducing Machine Systems."

I posted it here: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=381W6W4T

[Dead_Parrot]

65. ...just remember to add an off switch!

:scared:

[joshcryer]

72. It'd be hive based not actual self-replication, so think of it as turning a desert hell hole...

...into an industrial hell hole.

[Dead_Parrot]

75. That's OK then

Warm and fuzzy. :)

[joshcryer]

84. Check the paper out, it's really good, imo. There's plenty of empty, sparse, desert land in NM / AZ.

I don't see how we're going to go to zero emissions before a tipping point without either magic tech or serious Apollo-style government interactions.

[Nihil]

30. Almost totally agree with you there ...

> If we're going to stop global warming, it will look something like this:
> http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x191961
> ...

Yep.

> If we're not going to stop global warming, then we're going to burn a lot
> more fossil fuels.
> ...

Yep (sadly).

> There are a couple of dark-horse candidates for clean energy.
>
> One is polywell fusion, there's a small group working on Bussard's designs,
> hopefully they'll have some good news in a year or two.

Yep (hopefully).

> Another dark horse is space-based solar power.

Urghh.

I really don't want to see too much money wasted on space-based solar projects
as that is even more of a "technology will save us" Hail-Mary pass to justify
Business As Usual than even fusion (partly because it is newer thus perceived
not only as sexier but a "future" fix rather than a "still trying to get it
working properly" fix).

Still, if the earlier wedges come into play, SBS can slip out again without
being noticed.
:hi:

(Edited to fix the broken link)

[Nihil]

78. Aw shoot ...

... That stopped the argument didn't it ...

Damn .. I agree with one of the most anti-nuke people on the board
(ok, one of the most rational anti-nukes on the board) and suddenly
we have silence from the rest of the peanut gallery ...

Shit. If even a "nuclear fanatic" can accept that the provision of real,
acting, working wedges from the renewable energy market can sort things
out then why are (certain) people so negative about it?

[XemaSab]

17. Nukes and rooftop solar

with a small amount of solar thermal, hydro, and geothermal.

[Name removed]

19. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[XemaSab]

27. Me and Slim Pickens

We go way back.

[NYC_SKP]

31. You are right, Nikola Tesla said it a LONG time ago:

"No matter what we attempt to do, no matter to what fields we turn our efforts, we are dependent on power.

We have to evolve means of obtaining energy from stores which are forever inexhaustible, to perfect methods which do not imply consumption and waste of any material whatever.

If we use fuel to get our power, we are living on our capital and exhausting it rapidly.

This method is barbarous and wantonly wasteful and will have to be stopped in the interest of coming generations."

[GliderGuider]

60. Sorry to mess with your thread, kdt

You'll find out a lot of very useful stuff here, just keep your radar on, take everything with a grain of salt and don't forget to have some fun along the way. This shit gets way too serious way too easily.

Cheers.

[joshcryer]

64. Yeah, it was unfortunate, I came back here expecting a lot of interesting responses...

...2/3rds of it was a nuclear power disaster debate. What disrespectful behavior exhibited by some of you rascals. :hi:

[Dead_Parrot]

76. Your mother dresses you funny.

:evilgrin:

[Nihil]

81. "Funny" compared to whom?

:P

[Dead_Parrot]

82. Not you, obviously.

[Nihil]

87. Damn ...

... the guy who took my money *promised* me that he'd destroyed the negatives ...
hmmm ... so when did you move down to NZ again?

:P