Wind and Sun Beat Other Energy Alternatives 584
iandoh passes along the news that researchers at Stanford University have completed the first quantitative, scientific comparison of alternative energy solutions by assessing not only their potential for delivering energy for electricity and vehicles, but also their impacts on global warming, human health, energy security, water supply, space requirements, wildlife, water pollution, reliability, and sustainability. Based on their model, they found that the best sources of alternative energy are wind, concentrated solar, and geothermal energy. The worst are nuclear, clean coal, and ethanol-based fuels. In other words, "the options that are getting the most attention are between 25 to 1,000 times more polluting than the best available options."
Re:Well of course (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Well of course (Score:3, Informative)
There are some reactor designs that are amenable for making weapons-grade materials and there are some that are not.
The best weapons grade material comes from frequent replacement of fuel rods so you can maximize the amount of Pu-240 generated from U-238 and minimize the amount of Pu-241 generated from Pu-240.
The intermingling of Pu-240 and Pu-241 is one of the best ways to prevent proliferation.
Re:Nuclear (Score:5, Informative)
The only reason most of it "needs" to be stored is regulatory. 99% of the so-called primary wastes are perfectly usable as fuel for future cycles. If reprocessing were permitted (like in France, etc.) most of our "nuclear wastes" would become "nuclear fuel reserves."
Almost all of what's left is either commercially valuable / recyclable or harmless.
The nuclear waste "problem" is a creation of our fossil fuel industry driven political system.
--MarkusQ
Re:Nuclear (Score:3, Informative)
At the 40 year mark the radiation levels are still something to be cautious of, but short term exposure isn't a major problem at that point so as long as you don't take long naps on the stockpile, you should be fine. The thing I find most fascinating about nuclear versus coal is in this wikepedia article [wikipedia.org]:
In countries with nuclear power, radioactive wastes comprise less than 1% of total industrial toxic wastes, which remain hazardous indefinitely unless they decompose or are treated so that they are less toxic or, ideally, completely non-toxic.[53] Overall, nuclear power produces far less waste material than fossil-fuel based power plants. Coal-burning plants are particularly noted for producing large amounts of toxic and mildly radioactive ash due to concentrating naturally occurring metals and radioactive material from the coal. Contrary to popular belief, coal power actually results in more radioactive waste being released into the environment than nuclear power. The population effective dose equivalent from radiation from coal plants is 100 times as much as nuclear plants.
Nuclear is far better than coal, but it is true that wind and solar do pollute less if you ignore manufacturing processes.
Re:Nuclear is the best option. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Nuclear? (Score:3, Informative)
Define "exposed". Define "at risk".
That said, if the fuel rod has sat in a tank of water for six months, you can store it safely under your bed with no risk whatsoever, unless you're worried about terrorists breaking in to steal it to make an atom bomb. Stupid terrorists, because there isn't enough fissionable in a fuel rod to make an atom bomb, and processing one into an atom bomb is going to expend a lot of terrorists (hot uranium is dangerous - cold is fine. And by hot I don't mean radioactive, I mean melting metal hot).
TWO fuel rods gets a bit more complicated, of course. They're designed to not do nasty stuff in isolation, but two or more placed closely enough together with other conditions being met (those conditions won't be met by accident unless you have a LOT more than two) can be problematic.
Re:Well of course (Score:5, Informative)
Of course the ones getting the most attention can be much more easily controlled by those who provide it.
I smell a vague conspiracy theory that doesn't hold water compared to more simple explanations. Specifically that those which are attracting more attention are doing so in general because they're more viable in the short-term, or rather appeared that way.
Ethanol got a lot of attention (read: subsidies) because of exactly one thing: the iowa primary. Traditionally, politicians hoping to run for president supported ethanol because Iowa grows corn. The thinking was "If I support ethanol, I'll get big numbers in Iowa, one of the first primaries, and that will get me big campaign contributions!" Who cares about whether it is a real solution. Although not a good reason, it's not that "THEY" can controll you better. And to be honest, you can add it to your current car and put it into the infrastructure, that's a plus it has over other energies. Of course as the article points out, it's a waste of time for numerous reasons.
Nuclear: again, not evil white men out to control you, it was a big thing for a while. Of course it's going to get attention: we can do it right now.
Clean coal: you know who is pushing big for this? Everyone who is currently supported by coal, which is a lot of people. Say you own a coal-fired power plant. Which is more attractive: being forced to dismantle your plant completely in a few years (IE if solar power wins) or spend a few million on researching "clean" coal and convincing congressmen on your payroll that you're on the way to making coal which has all of the upsides of renewables but none of the downsides without raising taxes? If your answer is "going bankrupt" instead of "clean coal" you are either a saint, a liar, or are badly deluded.
In short, we can see it's not about population control, it's about money, laziness, and semi-corruption. It's not evil crafty men in suits trying to turn off your power if you stumble onto their secrets, its about fat lazy men in suits being greedy.
Subtle difference I guess, but be realistic and you won't sound like you wear a tinfoil hat.
Re:Nuclear (Score:4, Informative)
Well given that he computes the carbon footprint of nuclear by dragging things like "terrorists could steal the fuel to make a bomb which could be used in a city which would burn and release lots of CO2," and that one of the reasons nuclear plants take so long to license is the regulatory hurdles designed in part to prevent terrorists from doing just that, I'd say the GP's summary, while glib, was accurate.
--MarkusQ
It's called "tidal power" (Score:3, Informative)
Moon energy. I know there must be some way that we can harvest this great natural resource. Maybe attach a rope to it that pulls a gear or burn it or something.
It's called "tidal power". There are some large power plants running on it already, and more being considered.
The moon's gravity drags the oceans around, creating a bulge on the side of the earth toward the moon and one on the side opposite. The earth rotates faster than the moon so the oceans appear to go up and down. This creates massive flows of water into and out of bays and other holding areas. Turbines in these flows can be used to generate electricity, while seawalls, dams, and other structures can be built to guide the flows for efficient harvesting.
The friction of the tides (either against the Earth or against energy harvesting turbines) slows the rotation of the Earth and raises the orbit of the Moon. This power will continue to be available until the Earth's rotation is slowed to where the Earth is tide-locked to the Moon - one side always facing the Moon, just as one side of the moon always faces the Earth - and further until the Earth stops rocking back-and-forth relative toward the Moon (as the Moon still does a little bit relative to the Earth). This will take geologic time, whether this "moon energy" is harvested or not.
Re:Well of course (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well of course (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, it was.
Without the stupid Jimmy Carter-style prohibitions on nuclear recycling, "nuclear waste repositories" would be completely unnecessary; we could re-refine our "nuclear waste" and the actual amount of real "waste" to date would be easily pit into a 100-gallon drum or two, stuffed into a rocket, and lobbed at the sun.
Not just that, they don't evaluate the OTHER problems caused by the technologies. Making solar panels for solar electrical generation generates massive quantities of toxic waste, which has to either be chemically treated or otherwise disposed of. Wind farms have massive problems of maintenance due to fluctuating conditions, and are unreliable at the best of times.
The most "reliable" of the lot is actually Geothermal, which is predictable. Solar and Wind both have weather-related (not joking here) problems; Tidal and Hydroelectric (river/dam-based) generation suffer whenever the water level changes due to rainfall or landmass motion.
Now admittedly, Ethanol is a fucking joke, especially corn-based ethanol which wastes 1.8 units of energy just to produce 1 unit of "energy" in the form of whiskey in the gas tank (you think I'm joking: I'm not). And Ethanol is also MURDER on engines.
And then there's the problem of burning food for fuel. I mean, seriously. That's an idea that came right out of the wrong side of an Animaniacs "Good Idea, Bad Idea" sketch if I ever saw one.
"Clean Coal"? Well, no combustion-based energy source will ever be "perfect", but I don't think that completely eliminating coal use overnight is possible, so I'm all for cleaning it up as much as is reasonable until we can phase it out over time (one big problem with the envirowacko movement, they always want things RIGHT NOW, they never can understand that you have to change things over time).
As for the rest... there's a reason that gasoline beat electrical batteries for automobile power sourcing in the early days and it still holds true today: our battery technology just has NOT caught up to where it needs to be. Gasoline allows for a fill-up to take 5-10 minutes tops, and a mobile range of a couple hundred miles before another fill-up. If you can't do that, then you can't compete with gasoline, and I'm sorry but that is just how it has to be.
"Hydrogen" isn't a real fuel source: you have to extract it from something, and store it somehow. IF we had nothing but electrical from "renewable" sources or properly refined Nuclear, it could theoretically be made viable (better utilized in fuel cells than a combustion engine, but still). Since the majority of our generation is still fossil-fuel based, generating hydrogen to "replace" gasoline will actually cause MORE emissions than just putting the fucking gas in our cars.
Re:Nuclear (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well of course (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Nuclear is the only viable option (Score:3, Informative)
- They require thousands of miles of new power lines to be built. Getting power lines approved and built is monumentally expensive (which is why Mr. Pickens wants the tax payers to pay for them instead of building them himself).
I was under the impression we could just slap some solar panels on our house and take ourselves either off the grid or contribute back into it? How does that imply thousands of miles of new power lines? Now imagine _everyone_ doing it. Clean energy, plentiful, cooperation amongst neighbours - that sounds pretty good to me.
[...]nor does the sun shine all the time.[...]
Whnuh..?? The sun is constantly barraging us with energy! It doesn't just blink out. Do you mean clouds? There is still energy getting through - maybe not as much but it's still there ;)
Re:Wind needs back-up generation (Score:3, Informative)
Wind isn't the panacea because it needs back-up generation which needs to be running all of the time. What do you do when the wind isn't blowing?
A) Storage works just fine. (Do a search on "vanadium redox" to see how that's handled with some recently deployed technology. For large power companies pumping water from a low reservoir to a high one when there's extra power and running gennies as it comes back down when power is short is also practical - and already deployed.)
B) Wind at any given point on the Earth's surface is quite variable. (This is why home-power mills need storage.) Wind averaged over a number of mills spread out over a larger area is much better behaved. Hooking several scattered wind farms together in a grid fills in the holes from local weather patterns quite nicely.
C) A major fraction of the wind power comes from "lake effect" winds: Periodic flows from bodies of water toward land during the afternoon and from land to water during the predawn morning. These occur because the temperature of the land changes rapidly with the day/night cycle while the temperature of water is virtually unchanged. Some of the best wind sites are in mountain passes where such lake-effect winds are funneled. Example: The farms at Altamont Pass in California uses the lake effect with the Pacific Ocean as the "lake", California's Central Valley as the "island", and the Pacific Coast Mountain Ranges as the funnel with the San Francisco Bay, Sacremento River Delta, and Altamont Pass as the funnel's stem.
Another major chunk comes from the prevailing wind flow.
Weather patterns are on top of this. But in many areas the prevailing flows are dominant.
D) Wind power tracks heating/air conditioning load peaks (because wind reduces the effectiveness of building insulation) and the strong afternoon peak of the lake effect coincides almost exactly with the afternoon peak of the electrical load.
Result: You don't need to have anywhere near equivalent capacity of the windmills in hot standby power. In fact, several geographically diverse wind farms are actually more reliable statistically than the power plants that would "back" them.
Re:Well of course (Score:3, Informative)
I"m wondering if their evaluation of nukes..was based on the current 'laws and regulations' in the US (encacted by Carter I think?), that pretty much prohibit things like breeder reactors, that 'can' be used to manufacture weapons grade stuff, but, also can allow the fuel to be used much more efficiently, leaving much less waste than the first run we currently do?
From my limited understanding, if we repealed those laws...we could really stretch the nuclear fuel in a massive way, and have much, much less radioactive waste to have to manage, that has a much lower half life, etc.
THey do assume that. [rsc.org] (that's the "HTML article" in the second story link, in case they don't like direct links like this).
They also try to calculate how much use of nuclear electric plants would increase the chance of a nuclear war (by giving more groups access to various nuclear technologies), and the environmental impact such a war might have.
This turns out to be rather insignificant, at least as far a carbon emissions are concerned (table 3). "Lifecycle" emissions for nuclear are "9-70" which is about equivalent to Solar PV or Geothermal, and somewhat worse than the 10-20-ish range of most others. Wind is significantly better at <10. They also calculate an "Opportunity cost", which they have much higher for nuclear because it takes so long to build (partly regulatory issues again).
I think centralization/concentration also works out as a negative, even if not counted directly.
Hydro plants scored about the same as nuclear, only wind/sun/ocean powered systems came out ahead.
Re:It's called "tidal power" (Score:3, Informative)
The libration of the Moon is not a rocking motion. It's almost entirely a perspective effect caused by, in descending importance:
1) Eccentricity of the Moon's orbit. It spins at an essentially constant rate, but it does not move round the Earth at a constant rate.
2) Inclination of the Moon's spin axis. It's not parallel to the Earth's axis; when it tilts toward us we see the north polar regions, and two weeks later we see the south end.
3) Rotation of the Earth. Look at the Moon now and again twelve hours from now, and you'll be looking from two places up to eight thousand miles apart.
rj
Re:Nuclear? (Score:2, Informative)
Department of Energy administrative worker restrictions are 5 rem/year body dose. You receive about .360 rem/year from natural and man made sources, mostly radon. Every DOE site has it's own specific Rad Worker Training program. A simple google search for "Rad worker training" will net you a few results which will answer your basic questions.
Atoms, Radiation, and Radiation Protection by James Turner is also good text for introduction to radiation.
Re:Nuclear? (Score:1, Informative)
As someone who works in the field, I can tell you that radiation is just energy given off by the radioactive decay of unstable nuclei (of which there are plenty). Your mother's good china set, for example, are actually a tiny bit radioactive, as is the ground, and as is the potassium in your body. The average person gets a moderately small amount each year just from walking on the earth and being in the sun. Now of course a critical reactor (critical means running FYI, not about to blow up, which they also can't) is extremely hazardous, but the shielding methods we have currently are extremely effective, and your average plant worker will not receive anything more than a small amount of extra radiation a year.
Re:This is a judgement call, not science. (Score:3, Informative)
In the US on the other hand they put the stuff we actually EAT into the pot.
As I understand it, the primary biofuel crop in the United States is dent corn rather than sweet corn.
It is not the stuff we eat. It is the stuff our food eats before its trip to the slaughterhouse.
Re:Nuclear? (Score:3, Informative)
The study of protecting individuals and the public from the potentially harmful effects of radiation is known as Health Physics. Every industry that uses radiation sources -- hospitals, nuclear power plants, materials engineering facilities, etc. -- employs health physicists.
I would recommend looking at the Health Physics Society [hps.org] web page and possibly contacting them. They are a professional organization made up of people in the field -- people whose jobs are to detect & measure radiation; inspect facilities; and write, understand & enforce various regulations.
What he says about nuclear is just stupid (Score:5, Informative)
So basically, to make Nuclear just fall off his chart, he assumes that building more powerplants will lead to nuclear war, and calculates how much stuff that will burn. Is that not completely absurd?
Basically, the gist of what he's saying about Nuclear is this: "We have to pretend like it's a bad idea, because if we don't, other countries will want to do it, and then they might build bombs. So, say it with me: Nuclear is a baad idea."
Does somebody want to break it to the guy that Iran and other states will pursue weapons programs no matter what sort of powerplants we build in the US? And besides, what's more likely to cause war: Clean and cost-effective nuclear powerplants that the rest of the world will want to copy, or an energy shortage which sends us looking to secure fossil fuels? I think the latter.
Anyway, this calculating methodology is so incredibly bizarre that I suspect it's bought.
Re:Nuclear? (Score:3, Informative)
How about this?
http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation.html [nrc.gov]
You could look at a nuclear engineering text if you wanted to know more.
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/NE-39 [berkeley.edu]
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/NE-101 [berkeley.edu]
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/NE-124 [berkeley.edu]