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."
Well of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Shortage of solar cells might be a problem if production cannot meet demand, but I can't imagine it being more severe than a shortage of uranium or petroleum.
What if you had less sunlight because you caused a nuclear winter?
Re:Well of course (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Well of course (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, solar thermal plants can be made using the same steam turbines and generators used by coal, gas power plants to produce energy from high pressure steam.
If one adds an additional component of a heat reservoir such as molten salt, a solar plant is even capable of providing electricity through night and cloudy days (depending on the duration of reduced insolation and the capacity of the thermal reservoir of course) without requiring any advancement in battery technology.
However, I really do not appreciate him lumping nuclear power in with inferior bio fuels and carbon sequestering. Proper use of feeder-breeder reactors can effectively eliminate nuclear waste from uranium reactors and provide power for the entire world for many hundreds of years (all on its own). Add to that the potential of thorium reactors using a more plentiful fuel and nuclear power makes a perfect compliment to solar for regions not blessed with great weather.
Meanwhile the drilling and pressure issues of carbon sequestering mean that the excess energy extracted is marginalized while the risk of a geologic release of billions of tons of CO2 due to fissures or shifting could kill thousands or even millions if close enough to a major city.
Biofuel is not a renewable resource. To meet our gasoline needs alone we would need a corn field larger than the continental US. Even with switchgrass we would need ~25% of the surface of the US to meet our gasoline needs. Consider for a moment that modern farming is already devastating the aquifers that will take 10s to 100s of thousands of years to replenish naturally.
Wind has some potential but can never be used for base load due to the fact that weather on earth is inherently unpredictable, producing squalls that can overload a power grid with to much wind or starve it with periods of calm over nearly continental spans.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I object to your lumping any corn-produced fuel with "biofuel" the real biofuels are waste by-products(aka something that doesn't require "fields", except maybe junkyards) and restaurant grease is probably sufficient in most areas. Any crop used as a biofuel is just an attempt by that industry to get more subsidies, but intensive production is going the wrong way when it comes to energy efficiency.
Down with Nuclear... (Score:3, Insightful)
Turn off the sun! We have all the solar and wind we'll ever need. Nuclear is a complete failure.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Biofuel is not a renewable resource. To meet our gasoline needs alone we would need a corn field larger than the continental US. Even with switchgrass we would need ~25% of the surface of the US to meet our gasoline needs. Consider for a moment that modern farming is already devastating the aquifers that will take 10s to 100s of thousands of years to replenish naturally.
Corn is not the only bio fuel available and in fact is one of the
worst available.
The current top producer is algae using sealed vertical hy
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It should be view as a 75 year solution.
Stop gap sounds..cheap.
Use it as solar thermal ramps up.
Now, some of the reactors on the drawing board look fantastic. Hopefully they will see the light of day.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Places that have massive deserts with high solar levels
should not use nuclear power as an option in the future.
Also undersea ocean currents and the high level jet streams
would provide more power than several earths could use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_stream#Future_power_generation [wikipedia.org]
The antarctic current alone is 125 times all the flow of all
the rivers on earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Circumpolar_Current [wikipedia.org]
Slow current power generation tools like the Aquanator
could provide power to small isl
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why are you pretending as though a lack of nuclear fuel will mean insufficient energy?
Do you know exactly how much energy can be harvested with even inefficient solar cells?
Is this just because I lived in the desert? Is that the only reason I know these things? You can power the entire United States on solar power alone if you're willing to build enough troughs, and it will require but a small percentage of unwanted shit land in the middle of nowhere.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That's really not that big. It's only twice the size of the greater Los Angeles area, for instance.
Fair trade. Let's do it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
24 x 7 x 365 the sun is up in various places of the world.
At this time a lot of countries sell electricity to each other.
A world wide grid with losses comparable to the US of 7% is
very workable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Losses [wikipedia.org]
This is with an old adhoc unmodern failing grid too.
The large deserts of the world could power the earth many times over.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy#Energy_from_the_Sun [wikipedia.org]
Solar is not the only option, but it is in the top 5.
Nuclear is set to ru
Re:Well of course (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
By that project's measure, current solar technology needs 3 "average" states of southern U.S. soil to provide electricity (raising at 2% per year (leading to 100% useage of ALL U.S. soil in no more than 80 years). At 10% average efficiency per square meter you still need over 2 average u.s. states. We are nowhere near producing solar panels with that efficiency at acceptable (read : actually possible to implement) cost. "Oops".
And btw, Alaska will obviously not do. You need florida, texas soil. Or the US co
Re:Well of course (Score:5, Interesting)
There are production solar-thermal facilities in California. They are base-load generation, too, because they burn natural gas when output falls (in practice they're 85%-90% solar).
Most of these "alternative energy" ideas are pipedreams that just can't scale to the 1 TW electical baseload (which will get far higher whe people start plugging in hybrids - the idea that "people wil only plug in at night" is another pipe dream). Solar thermal is great, however. It's not limited by the scarce elements needed by photoelectric cells. It's proven technology using well-understood components.
If you want *no* depenency on fossil fuels, nuclear is the only real choice with technology that doesn't depend on some future scientific breakthrough, but I think a minimal natural gas solution is a great plan for Southern states.
Replacing heating oil for heating in Northern states is going to be a huge infrastructure change, however. Even if you're OK with the inefficiency of electrical heating (and we could be OK with that, given the right source of power), you *must* have a reliable way to deliver that power. Too many places lose power in blizzards, when the lines come down. Burying all the power lines in a rural area is a gigantic proposition.
Still, I'd rather spend 2 trillion on that than on bailing out executive bonuses and stockholder dividends!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems reasonable that the user could 'plug them in' anytime, but they could be hooked up to something as conceptually simple as a "vacation light timer". If the car's clock wasn't blinking 12:00, it seems like a tiny bit of electronics in the car could even be set so it didn't start charging until after a certain time.
Re:Well of course (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah a grid is needed for high power transmission much like
we have now, though I say it is far less expensive to maintain
if they buried it in service tunnels.
In the tunnels the temp remains constant and thus less losses due
to heat such as in the southwest.
Sag of the lines in high heat has its own set of issues.
Too many times massive thunderstorms, ice storms, downed trees
damage the lines or lightning surges damage the substations and
end users personal electronics.
Often after massive storms, downed lines kill ppl and pets.
Less repair of the lines means smaller repair crews which
equals lower insurance losses, and lower operating costs.
The initial tunneling cost is high but could done in the
highest repair rate areas first, and the savings rolled
on to the other areas over time, ie. "pay it forward".
Re: (Score:2)
Is the spent fuel from Nuke plants usable in a nuclear bomb? If it is not, then going all out for nuclear energy is the way to go. Use up all the uranium from the Earth, then all of it from the nuclear weapons stockpiles. Then when no more is left, use solar energy. No more nukes should mean no chance of a nuclear winter.
Really though I was hoping for the space elevator to work. At the top of said elevator create a solar energy plant. Out in space the solar plant should be able to create energy 24/7 cause i
Re: (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: (Score:3, Interesting)
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 ra
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: (Score:3, Interesting)
Except for your anti-environmentalist rants, I agree with some of what you say. (I'm very much for nuclear power, as an environmentalist.)
Except that "a couple hundred miles before another fill-up" is not needed for most people. From some results from google, ridetowork.org says 29 miles per day is the average, and another result from abcnews.com says that the average is 16 miles. As long as you can get to and from work, and do a little driving around town, that would be enough for most people,
and that
Re:Well of course (Score:4, Insightful)
Try Biking to work in 10 degree F weather with 4 inches of snow that is now Ice. Try biking 5 miles in 30 degree weather with fresh snow or rain coming down or catching the road spray of other melting ice and snow as you roll down the roads.
And this doesn't even begin to address the fact there there are not major transportation hubs all over the place or that they could be made cheap and easily. The ones in place has had the benefit of being there long enough for the landscape and industry to develop around it. It's an entirely different scenario when attempting to kludge fit on together in an existing situation.
What works in your little world isn't always practical in others.
Re:Well of course (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think electricity is a good idea for cars as they exist today.
Right now, cars are massive, they're heavy, they're expensive.
Why the hell would I want to pay for a car that only goes 75km for 5 years?! Why the hell would I want that car to take up a huge amount of space in my driveway?!
A more ideal electric vehicle would be inexpensive; less than $2000. A more ideal electric vehicle would be small; I should be able to fold it up and hang it on the wall in my garage when I'm not using it. A more ideal electric vehicle would be light; I should be able to fold it up and hang it on the wall in my garage when I'm not using it without a forklift.
Regular people would still likely own cars. They'd need one for trips, for towing the boat, for days when the electric just won't do the job, or it's too cold to use the electric (Batteries hate cold). An ideal electric vehicle would be more like a 4-wheel electric bicycle, with enough room for 2 people, a top speed of 50 km/h, room for a couple bags of groceries, an EXTREMELY light, watertight skin (It should be able to handle a foot of snow on the roof, but not someone standing on it), and a range that's short, but a hell of a lot longer than any of the "cars pretending to be environmentally friendly" we're seeing today. It'll take a change in our conception of a vehicle, but it'd be very useful.
If I were in the government, my goal would be to legalize a new class of vehicle for public roadways that would be designed specifically for 50km/h use and no more, with greatly reduced safety regulations, and for internal combusion engine vehicles, greatly reduced particulate emissions standards if the economy is beyond a certain level (for example, 80MPG city).
Re: (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 e
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: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well of course (Score:5, Interesting)
The US may never have good nuclear reactors. The process of developing new reactor technology is so mired in political bullshit that in the future we'll have to look at nations like France for how to apply nuclear power in an effective and safe way. I am convinced that it will never be developed here at home.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Westinghouse and GE just want to build the old stuff with a few minor changes (move a bolt and add another generation number) at the taxpayers expense. They are the sort of places where they pretend to have an R&D budget but spend it all on "executive retreats".
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This.
Building a nuke really isn't that hard. The US plowed through it in a few years.
Corrected for inflation into 2008 USD, the whole shebang was only $24 billion.
That's pretty cheap when you think about how much the government is throwing around for all these bailout packages.
Re: (Score:2)
Problem is, electric cars aren't very practical right now. Battery capacity, charge times, etc., all need to improve by an order of magnitude.
Carbon-neutral biodiesels could keep the existing vehicle fleet going until electric cars are fully developed. In Europe about 30% of cars could run on biodiesel right now. The USA has stupid laws which prevent diesel cars from being used there.
Re:Well of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Battery capacity, charge times, etc., all need to improve by an order of magnitude.
So, just to use the Phoenix SUT as a starting point and improving it by an order of magnitude, you're saying that you want electric cars that go 1,500 miles per charge and charge to 80% in 30 seconds? Or are you still under the misconception that EVs only go 50 miles or so and inherently take hours to recharge?
State of the art but commercially available battery tech is the titanates, which get ~70Wh/kg and can recharge as fast as you can provide the power and cool the pack (individual cells have been charged to 80% in one minute), or phosphates and stabilized spinels which get ~100Wh/kg and can recharge in 10 to 20 minutes. Traditional li-ion now gets nearly 180Wh/kg, but is limited to 1 hour charging minimum and won't last the lifespan of the car (unlike the aforementioned techs). To get weight/range parity with a typical gasoline vehicle, you need about 300-400Wh/kg, which is what about a dozen different next-gen battery techs are promising. Personally, all I care about is the ability to drive for about two hours on a charge; I don't see the point to more since I'm not going to want to have to be sitting down for that long in a row.
As for chargers, the highest power EV chargers I've seen are 250kW. The highest I know of that are already installed for general use are the 60kW Aerovironment Posicharge chargers in Oahu. For a 200Wh/mi EV charging at 250kW, that's 21 miles range per minute of charging, meaning that charging makes up under 5% of your travel time.
In short, while the state of the art tech isn't perfect yet, it's not half bad.
Re:Well of course (Score:5, Interesting)
It's true... in a very false way. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sometimes the (non-science) environmentalists are overzelous and try to sell this argument. The fact is everything currently takes brown energy to produce so if you're making a nuclear power plant, that's brown energy because it takes carbon-based work to make the fuel.
Solar panels? Those are brown energy because the wafers and cells take carbon-energy to produce.
Electric cars? Those are brown energy because it takes brown energy to make the battery.
It's true, but really it's false. The energy produced, sav
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:All things decay (Score:5, Insightful)
AKA: If the site is valuable maintaining or upgrading the wind farms is a net gain.
Hard to beat economics (Score:3, Insightful)
When a solution is safer, uses less resources, causes less polution. But costs more to scale to a useful size, then it tends to lose out.
While electricity is a commodity, and is sold on a market as such, the cheapest producer wins. To fix this artificial constraints that artificially inflate the cost of the cheaper methods of electricity production have to be considered.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Instead, make these cheaper, more polluting methods of electric generation pay for the environmental damage that they are causing. At that point wind, solar, and geothermal energy would become more cost-viable.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You can do this for the Country you live in, but you cannot enforce it on a developing country.
From a moral or a practical perspective?
From a practical perspective, you can certainly tell a country to whom you provide $X million per year in aid that you won't provide that money if they don't subscribe to your energy policy.
And from a moral perspective, wouldn't developing nations be better off if they were generating power from resources that aren't scarce? Sub-Saharan Africa doesn't have oil, but have plenty of wind and sun.
Re: (Score:2)
To fix this artificial constraints that artificially inflate the cost of the cheaper methods of electricity production have to be considered.
So you're saying we should stop subsidizing the coal, nuclear, and bio-fuel agriculture industries?
-Rick
The farmers are gonna be mad (Score:5, Interesting)
The corn farmers are going to be upset by this but once again research shows that Ethanol made from corn is not an energy efficient way to create fuel. It's time to stop the ethanol subsidies and start spending money on energy sources with real potential. That way corn will now go back into the food stream, and farmers will also start growing hops again rather than switching to corn to make more money [yoursforgo...tables.com].
Sincerely,
Home Brewer who misses his hops
Re: (Score:2)
Now about my vehicle, that's another story...
Re: (Score:2)
In theory, you could make bioethanol in a way that doesn't affect food crops (algae etc). BUT: with the laws of economics at work, farmers WILL make sure they'll grow the highest-profit crop. This will most likely be corn for bioethanol then.
I think that solar panels are not likely to become useful enough for heavy use. Solar concentration maybe, but you still need a lot of space for that. Wind energy is relatively easy but probably not economical yet. In the windy region where I live, they didn't build any
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The farmers are gonna be mad (Score:5, Interesting)
Why don't we just put all the state primaries on the same day? The importance of the Iowa primary is no longer vastly inflated, presidential canidates no longer have to pledge to Big Corn, and ethanol stops getting subsidies.
Farmers can get mad all they like, it's bad for the rest of us.
Nuclear (Score:5, Insightful)
I love it. He only doesn't like nuclear power because of them there terr'ists. And that it's completely reasonably possible to get weapons-grade uranium from any nuclear reactor.
And he completely ignores the effects of wind power on things like bats and birds.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Storing that nuclear waste for the next million years is the problem. Who wants that stored in their backyard?
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:4, Interesting)
PS: Carter understood a lot more about the industry than most lay people. "He was assigned to Schenectady, New York, where he took graduate work at Union College in reactor technology and nuclear physics, and served as senior officer of the pre-commissioning crew of the Seawolf, the second nuclear submarine." So it's not like this was some idiot deciding something based on an uninformed whim.
Re:Nuclear (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll agree that Carter knew a lot about nuclear power, and for that reason I doubt that he thought that breeder reactors can blow up. 'cause it isn't true.
And while new fuel may be cheap the real question is how much does storing the fuel after extracting less than 1% of the energy cost?
--MarkusQ
Re: (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 thi
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Nuclear (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, it sounds like the author had an axe to grind. Being in the Bay Area, he's got to be aware of activists trying to shut down the wind farms near Stockton because they're killing birds. And I remember reading that the manufacture of photovoltaic cells uses some of the same processes that are already poisoning the groundwater in Silicon Valley.
Re:Nuclear (Score:5, Insightful)
> Yes, it sounds like the author had an axe to grind.
Of course the author had an ax to grind. Green gets grant money, nukes get you shunned from elite society.
The horrible truth is that for hard core greens the only solution is eliminating a couple billion excess humans and forcing the remnant to live a 'reduced' lifestyle to satisfy their self loathing. Thus no proposed solution to the 'energy crisis' is going to be acceptable if it has the potential to actually produce energy at affordable prices in quantities anywhere close to current levels. As you correctly note the greens are already mobilizing against wind and solar on the fear that they MIGHT become practical someday. There are even efforts to stop geothermal! What could possibly be wrong with geothermal? Google it if you want to be sickened.
The truth is there is no 'energy crisis' there is only a political movement to change our lifesysle. Nukes can be built perfectly safe these days, the fuel can be reprocessed to minimize the waste storage issue and we have more than enough Uranium to power any lifestyle we want until we finally perfect a practical fusion reactor. Saying this in public will end a scientist, politician or TV pundit's career though so we hear endless bleating about an energy crisis, running out of energy and global warming bullcrap intended to frighten us into doing things sane people would never do otherwise.
Re:Nuclear (Score:4, Interesting)
> A scientist saying creationism is real will get him shunned, as it should.
Yes it should. As should saying creationism is false should. Neither can be proved by the ways of science and anyone trying to push a political or religious agenda under the cover of science should be written out of the profession. Current science is only even believed to be valid back to the big bang and can say zero about anything before that... even if the phrase 'before the big bang' has a meaning or not. It might be able to say more in the future as our understanding improves but as things currently stand science cannot answer the big questions of Life, the Universe and Everything.
> A scientist saying "we need nukes, there is no possible way anything else can work" is not a scientific statement.
Corrent. However one can say all of the following and be 100% correct from a scientific Pov.
1. We currently possess the knowledge to build safe reliable nuke plants on a scale to provide all of our energy needs. The only obstacles are political. Since we know of at least one route to generating all of the energy we could want any talk of an 'energy crisis' is this pure political theater.
2. Sufficient proven reserves of Uranium exist to supply our needs for over a hundred years without recycling spent fuel rods. With recycling we have enough to either last much longer or increase our energy usage during the next hundred year.
3. No other currently proposed 'alternative energy' source, alone or in total can demonstrate a plan to provide our current energy supply at anywhere close to the current costs. Solar and wind are currently so innefficient that without government subsidies they would only be practical in locations so far off the grid that wiring them would be impractical. Continued research and development may or may not improve the deployment cost and output so as to make one or more alternatives practical in the future. Thus adopting as official policy that we MUST adopt these technologies means betting our future lifestyle and prosperiety on an ASSUMPTION that the price/kwh can be brought down.
4. While it is true that a practical fusion reactor has been thirty years away for the last forty years, unity gain is getting closer and closer now. It is thus rational to argue that it is at least as likely that we can build a fusion reactor in the next hundred years as it is that we can perfect wind or solar in the next twenty.
Re:Nuclear (Score:4, Interesting)
Nice conspiracy theory you have there
It's a conspiracy theory in that it claims that the hard-core greens (which by no means includes all liberals, or all environmentalists) are lying about their stated reasons for opposing nuclear power. But unlike most other conspiracy theories it makes a specific prediction, which is that as solar, wind, and geothermal power becomes increasingly viable as replacements for fossil fuels, greens will suddenly discover reasons why they're unacceptable. I believe that is likely to be the case; we'll get to find out in the next decade or so.
Re:Nuclear (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention the gross amount of concrete that would be needed to create all those plants and the resulting global climate effects resulting from the emissions in creating that concrete.
As opposed to the solar and wind installations that are built from pixie dust? The US has 104 active nuclear plants producing 20% of our electricity [wikipedia.org]. Is building 400 more to get close to 100% really going to cause a concrete shortage?
Re:Nuclear (Score:4, Interesting)
The study claims to be quantitative and scientific. But when he goes into his anti-nuclear rant, it's all just opinion.
We currently have no perfect energy sources. I for one think nuclear sucks less than most of the others.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe these statements are also relevant:
Weird... It's like you tried to read the article... but then just read a random paragraph from the middle and stopped.
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
Re:Nuclear (Score:5, Funny)
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,"
Man, that's such a stretch my back just popped.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Right now, you could be wearing HUMAN SKIN (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And do please PUT THE FUCKIN' LOTION IN THE BASKET!!! after are finished with it.
Windbelt (Score:4, Interesting)
I am happy to hear this: Wind (and solar) does seem to be a very elegant energy solution.
I do note, however, that the report seems to assume wind-based power generation as taking place with traditional turbines.
The question arises in my mind if the use of the windbelt technology might offer additional gains in this respect?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windbelt [wikipedia.org]
My searches for use or deployment of the windbelt seem to garner sparse results...any info out there?
is the windbelt indeed a more effecient method of wind-power generation? Or are turbines still the way to go?
Re: (Score:2)
You must have mixed up capitalization when reading about the Windbelt, because its power output is measured in mW, not MW. ;) Yes, he updated his estimate to saying his latest version costs "$2 per watt", but then he makes himself look like an idiot by saying that this is cheaper than solar. These price per watt figures are per watt under a given set of standard conditions (25C, 1000W/m^2, etc), and the standard conditions for solar are in no way related to whatever conditions he used for wind. Judging f
Baseline power (Score:2)
Yes, I read the fine article.
With the way the grid is currently set up anything that wants to provide baseline power needs to be a very stable and very controllable source of energy.
Sure, you can try to mimic that with wind or wave stations all over the place but then you have the problem of getting all that power to act like it was a single stable controllable source and still get that power to where it needs to go.
Very sloppy, misleading headline (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Very sloppy, misleading headline (Score:4, Insightful)
And yet the word "model" appears nowhere in TFA. It refers instead to "quantitative evaluation". You can certainly disagree with the way evaluation was carried out. But you're not doing that. You're claiming that there are "wild assumptions", something I see no evidence of.
Advocates of a given technology tend to be pretty blind to its downsides. This is particularly true for advocates of nuclear power (waste disposal, weapons proliferation, high costs, high NIMBY factor) and biofuels (environmental degradation; diversion of cropland from food production). All this study does is point out these blind spots. The way you dismiss the study out of hand is all too typical of the river-in-Egypt approach to environmental debate.
One caveat with respect to biofuels: most of the objection to it don't apply to plans to extract it from oil-rich algae [renewableenergyworld.com]. But this emerging technology doesn't seem to get much press, probably because it doesn't have the entrenched businesses lobbying for it that nukes and fuel crops do.
Missing option (Score:5, Funny)
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 o
Re: (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 n
Nuclear is the best option. (Score:5, Insightful)
I love how it's dismissed out of hand because of the bogeyman argument.
TERRORISM!!!!!! Oh crap.
We better rule out anything that is efficient and can be used RIGHT NOW.
No let's pick the ones based on Unobtanium.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It mostly takes so long because of all the regulatory hurdles. If the other technologies were held to the same paperwork standards, they'd take as long (or longer) to get online.
--MarkusQ
Nuclear? (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was young and savvy, I always knew that nuclear power was bad. Polluting. Toxic. Dangerous. Wrong. But now that I'm older, I'm not so sure. In fact I think it's pretty safe. But, I can't objectively confirm this. My current opinion is still just as uniformed as my previous one.
Trouble is, it's difficult to separate the facts from the rhetoric, and it is danm near impossible to find an unbiased introduction to radioactivity, its uses dangers and safety limits. I would like to learn more, but there is precious little information available. I mean real information, with numbers. Without them, I'm just getting gas. And no, I am not going to rely on wiki-trips.
It's easy to find information on astronomy, chemistry, physics, mathematics, radio, electricity, etc, etc, etc. But radioactivity? Not a chance. How close to I have to be to an exposed nuclear rod before I am "at risk"? 10 meters? 100 meters? A kilometer? In orbit? Give me graphs. Give me numbers. Help me understand. I'm not stupid, nor are most people. But without hard numbers, I can't confirm or deny my suspicions?
Or you could just keep making Radioactive super-mutant movies and promoting candle wick alternate energy sources. Whichever.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Any radioactivity associated with N.P. is inherently assumed to be bad and probably rightfully so. ( I don't know either )
Nuclear however appears to be the ONLY fuel capable of supplying our needs. It gets a bad rap because of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Nuclear today is not your father's nuclear. I wish people would realize THAT.
Every other unrealistic idea has us completely shutting our energy usage down and replacing i
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Radioactivity from nuclear power is no different than radioactivity from any other source. Alpha, beta and gamma radiation is alpha, beta and gamma radiation. Radioactivity occurs naturally all around us. Every day. Trace amounts of radioactive materials are found everywhere. It used to be common to practice radiological monitoring skills using the mantles from Coleman (and other) gas
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The only drawback is what to do with the waste and I'm not sure so sure we have the time to figure this one out before we start using it.
There's a lot of mis-information surrounding nuclear waste. It only lasts for thousands of years when you don't reprocess to seperate the 5% that is useless in a reactor from the 95% that is useful. If you reprocess, the remainder needs to be stored for 500 years to reduce it's radioactivity to background levels.
Reprocessing was banned in the U.S. as an anti-proliferation measure during the Carter administration. At the time, the reprocessing process would have produced a highly pure fuel that could have be
Re: (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 on
Re: (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 th
Re: (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]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Becasue of paranoia and an old risk model.
New reactors and breeder reactors can sue the fuel so well, the tiny remaining radioactive bit only last 200 years.
It is a crime the we are not using IFR reactor.
And the perpetrators are ignorant 'environmentalists' that spread fear, and not fact.
IFR:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor [wikipedia.org]
Safe, and can shut down without assistance if need be.
First Post! (Score:2)
Space requirements? (Score:2)
Wind produces the least carbon? (Score:3, Interesting)
From TFA:
I wonder if the transportation necessary to reach 0.5 of all U.S. land was considered. You must transport 1) the windmills themselves to the site, 2) all maintenance materials, 3) all maintenance workers over the lifetime of the windmills, 4) the windmills themselves offsite once they're retired.
Transport costs for windmills is undoubtedly large. I live in Texas and I've seen a few of these being hauled up I-45 from the port of Houston on the way to their destination in Midland. The blades are hauled individually by semi trailer and are about 2x as long as an 18 wheeler. And they're shipped to Houston from the Netherlands!
So I suspect that the analysis has neglected to take these factors into account when rating the carbon footprint of wind power...
Economics? (Score:3, Insightful)
I didn't see much mention of economics in the article. If there's one thing I would have thought environmentalists had learned by now it is that no matter what the politicians say, nothing is going to happen if the finances don't work out. From what I can tell wind and solar are still a ways from being competitive with oil and gas even though the $/KWH cost is very close. The real problem is you have to put all the money in up front with wind and solar, whereas gas plants are cheap, and a gas plant can start generating revenue with its first drop of fuel. So a fossil-fuel plant carries less debt and less risk for the power company.
Also there's the problem of reliability. The wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine. So you either need lots of excess power generation capability, or you need to burn something. And yes, I know Germany has this tri-mode system with wind, solar, and biofuel. But the Germans couldn't keep the lights on without French nuclear power.
Nuclear is the only viable option (Score:3, Interesting)
Solar and wind are bad solutions because:
- 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).
- The wind doesn't blow all the time, nor does the sun shine all the time. You can store it (which is equivalent to running a hydroelectric dam) or build gas powered plants to run during the evenings.
- Solar and wind are not as inexpensive as proponents claim.
Nuclear is the only power source with a virtually unlimited source of fuel and that can be brought online without a massive new power grid and is nearly as cheap as gas powered generation.
Re: (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: (Score:3, Insightful)
The awesome thing about solar is that when installed on houses, it actually DECREASES the demand on the "grid", because power is generated locally and does not have to be transmitted. And... it does it when demand is highest!
This is a judgement call, not science. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is it is NOT comparing everything in one area. It uses multiple different measures, including pollution, cost, etc.
But when you that kind of study it requires you to make judgments about which is more important. These are value judgments, NOT scientific ones. Basically all this study does is tell you what a few scientists at Stanford want, not what is true or factual.
P.S. While ethanol as done in US is stupid, Ethanol as done in South America makes sense. They take all the production waste from agricultural and make ethanol from it. That would be the leaves, etc. the things we don't eat. In the US on the other hand they put the stuff we actually EAT into the pot. South American plan makes sense, but the US version does not..
Re: (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.
Tell Me Again About Nuclear (Score:3, Interesting)
All power (Score:3, Insightful)
Study relies on absurd assumptions (Score:4, Insightful)
This "study" is not really a study, but a model. As such, it's only as good as its assumptions. Unfortunately, many of its assumptions are completely wrong or totally implausible.
For example, the model predicts that nuclear power emits 25x as much carbon as wind power. You may wonder how that could be possible. It's possible because that conclusion follows from the model's assumptions which are all wrong, as follows.
First, the model compares the carbon output of new windmills, versus the carbon output of obsolete ways of refining uranium as an average over the last 40 years. Since refining uranium is far less carbon-intensive than it was, we should use the new figures only. It does not matter how much carbon was emitted by uranium enrichment for plants in the 1960s. Nobody is suggesting building those. We are debating whether we should build new nuclear power plants, or new windmills. As such, we should compare the carbon output of new uranium enrichment against new windmills. In this case the author clearly commits the "sunk cost fallacy", and the assumption is totally wrong.
Another mistaken assumption behind carbon emissions of nuclear plants, is carbon emissions from delays in plant constructions. The author assumes that nuclear power plants will take 10+ years to construct, and in the mean time, we will continue to generate electricity by burning coal. On the other hand, he assumes that the delay associated with windmills is "zero". However, that assumption is totally wrong. Windmills will lead to "zero delay" only if the United States throws away every coal-burning plant we have and replaces them with windmills this year. Since that will never happen, the assumption is wrong. In actuality, those coal plants will be decomissioned at the end of their useful lives and will be replaced by either wind, nuclear, or something else. So, the delay associated with nuclear or wind would probably be quite similar. Since this factor alone accounts for most of the "25x as much carbon" which nuclear is said to produce, that figure is refuted.
And there are other assumptions which are wrong. For example, the model assumes that nuclear power will lead to nuclear weapons which will cause a nuclear war with a resulting environmental catastrophe. Since nuclear power cannot be used to construct nuclear weapons, this assumption is mistaken. Unfortunately, the author makes many errors when he discusses the relationship between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. In actuality, nuclear power has almost no probability of starting a nuclear war.
The paper states that "Worldwide, nine countries have known nuclear weapons stockpiles (US, Russia, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea)" and shortly thereafter concludes that "Thus, the ability of states to produce nuclear weapons today follows directly from their ability to produce nuclear power". But that is entirely wrong. It's a spurious correlation. The reason some countries have nuclear power plants, and the same countries have nuclear weapons, is because those countries are technologically advanced, which causes both nuclear weapons and nuclear power; not because nuclear power causes nuclear weapons.
And there are other assumptions about nuclear (not related to carbon emissions) which are equally unrealistic. For example, the model claims that nuclear "produces fuel rods that are usually stored on site for several years in cooling ponds pending transport to a permanent site" and somehow concludes that nuclear has as much of a detrimental effect on wildlife as coal power. I honestly have no idea how he derived that conclusion (he doesn't say). It seems to me that mass strip-mining of the countryside (including mass-strip mining for serpentine rock if we intend to use that for mineral sequestration) every year, would greatly outweigh nuclear power's single kilometer of radioactivity buried deep beneath a single mountain in an isolated arid desert in Nevada, once. In fa
Did they include energetic cost of production? (Score:3, Insightful)
While solar "heat oil/water -> turbine" approach may be plausible, with the common "ecological" solar batteries, it takes more (usually "dirty") energy to produce such a battery than it can produce in its lifespan. Meaning solar is just a hype which in fact is bad for environment.
All Models are Wrong! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
there is ALWAYS wind. if there's no wind here, there certainly will be wind 500 miles from here. No wind is only possible when the the sun has gone out, AND the globe has stopped turning.
Re: (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 th