Energy suppliers... choice between coal/gas/wind/solar/etc?
- Thread starter crinkleshoes
- Start date
Nuclear is not green.
Carbon is irrelevant, nuclear waste is not something we want laying around. Let alone the devastation they cause when things go wrong...
Solar towers / wind / tidal / geothermic / solar look to be the best we have so far.
Would be nice to improve solar... photosynthesis seems to do a good job of it
Soldato
I have solar panels. That's my input into renewable energy...
Give me nuclear at night and solar in the day.
Give me nuclear at night and solar in the day.
I remember seeing, for the first time, that they'd got solar panels to hit 50%. Obviously in a lab but still.. they're getting better each year.
Yep they are doing great stuff. Same with battery tech, it's going to be fascinating stuff between 2018 and 2020. When all this stuff should be in mass production.
Associate
It's all a bit dodgy as the amount of electricity used domestically is swamped by industry so even if every home went 100% green there would still be spare green capacity because of the amount used by industry.
Roughly 1/3 each for industry, commercial and domestic according to http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-do-we-use-electricity
Roughly 1/3 each for industry, commercial and domestic according to http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-do-we-use-electricity
Soldato
Okay, fair warning, here come facts.
Nuclear would solve pretty much all energy problems on this planet for generations to come if people didn't have irrational fears about it. The amount of energy you can extract from a lump of nuclear fuel is several orders of magnitude greater than what you can extract from an equivalent quantity of coal or oil, and it doesn't produce greenhouse gases. The devastation that happens when it goes wrong? Exactly how many people do you think have died because of nuclear power generation? Including Chernobyl, the number is 56. And as a pessimistic estimate, 9000 are thought to have had foreshortened lifespans due to radiation exposure from that single event. Fukushima, nobody died because of the power plant; plenty died because of the tsunami, but none due to the damage to the power plant.
Now compare that to good old reliable coal. How many people do you think have died due to coal power generation? The number is 13,200. Per year. In the USA alone. And that's just counting deaths from inhalation of the pollution. It doesn't even take into account things like mining accidents.
So you have a one-off death toll of 9000 in the entire history of nuclear energy, compared against an annual death toll of 13,200 in a single country caused by coal. Do you still think nuclear power is dangerous?
Yeah nuclear waste is nasty stuff, but it can be managed.
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And slightly high bill, you can build plants that produce small amounts of low grade hospital level waste. rather than the old tech we are building now, that produces high level radio active waste. In fact some of the more modern designs can use our stockpile if nuclear waste as fuel.
As you say far to much scaremongering (thanks green peace and their lies).
And with every single power generation, not in my back yard. Sorry but you shouldn't have a say. You don't own the view or the area around your house. About time people realise they only purchased a few metres square of land. Not 10s of square miles.
Soldato
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Two words; thoruim reactors
Geothermal is good, the earths core is pretty much a natural nuclear reactor we just need to keep at the technology to tap into it
Geothermal is good, the earths core is pretty much a natural nuclear reactor we just need to keep at the technology to tap into it
I don't have figures but I remember reading the point is how long it needs to be managed after it's spent. The cost of management exceeds the money made in generating the electricity from it in the long run as there is a continuous re-housing of the spent waste every 20 years etc as a very expensive process.
I did remember seeing some noise on the science channels about new reactor types but the existing licensed producers/operators have attempted to block them - not sure how much truth is in there..
Also the problem is Plutonium is lethal without the radioactivity. And none of the accidents have vented it into the mass populous.
Voting public opinion.
It is up to the politician to demonstrate the safety.. perhaps putting a nuclear reactor under the houses of parliament would demonstrate safety.. however I suspect they'd still have Guy Fawkes in their minds.
Caporegime
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People like to bang on about coal deaths vs Nuclear deaths by comparing the mining of the material of one but only the active usage of the other. I'm sure a life has never been lost in mining uranium and the like.... sure.
The difference is you can mine coal relatively safely, most accidents are caused by crappy companies cutting corners than it actually being ludicrously dangerous. Same goes for black lung disease, it's mostly a case of how things are mined rather than just the mining itself, it's not a certain by product but a by product of lazy companies not caring about their workers.
Either way Thorium reactors aren't even remotely close to new and are mostly pie in the sky, sure a nice looking bird talks about it like it's new, even though the same style or reactor was done decades ago. Because they use acid combinations of materials to form a nuclear liquid the coating of said reactors is eaten away, it's basically ludicrously expensive and they have a stupidly short lifespan making them realistically non viable.
Back to talking about deaths, when a coal miner dies, he is someone who chose to be a coal miner(well maybe not in China), if an accident happened at a coal power plant, well there would be limited problems and it would effect those who chose to work there.
When a nuclear reactor goes critical, the entire surrounding area can become completely uninhabitable, people who have NOTHING to do with nuclear, made no choice to use, work for or be involved can have their houses made uninhabitable, can give them cancer, can effect entire industries, entire regions.
Chernobyl is one thing, others have been a problem, when you get a full scale nuclear melt down in a reactor that is closer to a major city you'll see a more major problem.
The fundamental problem with nuclear reactors is that for them to not be entire disasters in the long term they have to be completely infallible, humans are not infallible, every time someone states nothing can go wrong because they thought of everything something else they didn't think of goes wrong... it's that simple. Humans aren't infallible, thus a nuclear reactor CAN NOT BE INFALLIBLE, ever, it is actually impossible and when the results of a nuclear reactor going wrong could be a city becoming uninhabitable and 10k's of cases of cancer and extremely dangerous clean up. It IS a bad idea, it will always be a bad idea. Every single time I see someone talk about how safe it is they pull out the "but we have experience, we've thought of everything" argument and it is always ridiculous.
Even ignoring the thinking of everything, any bolt can fail, anything can be made badly and the world is full of contractors and huge corporations who cut corners because they think they can increase profits. Bridges have collapsed because a company cut corners, sky scrapers from reputable builders have mistakes found that could lead to complete failure.
When NOTHING is infallible, ever, that is a simple a basic truth in life, then you should NEVER make anything where the result of a complete disaster has so much potential for bad. If/when a coal mine explodes, it has no long term implications for the entire country or region, 1k people might die in a mine but there is NO risk of 10k people dying, or 1million people getting cancer, or a town being made uninhabitable.
There ARE situations in which coal mining has led to towns becoming uninhabitable, coal mining in the Appalachians is a very good example but only of unsafe practices from companies looking to cut corners. Slower/safer normal mining(digging slowly) would lead to little to no risk of towns/environmental disasters. The slurry pools from literally blowing the tops off of mountains is not indicative of coal mining but shady companies cutting corners(and completely corrupt politicians).
The difference is you can mine coal relatively safely, most accidents are caused by crappy companies cutting corners than it actually being ludicrously dangerous. Same goes for black lung disease, it's mostly a case of how things are mined rather than just the mining itself, it's not a certain by product but a by product of lazy companies not caring about their workers.
Either way Thorium reactors aren't even remotely close to new and are mostly pie in the sky, sure a nice looking bird talks about it like it's new, even though the same style or reactor was done decades ago. Because they use acid combinations of materials to form a nuclear liquid the coating of said reactors is eaten away, it's basically ludicrously expensive and they have a stupidly short lifespan making them realistically non viable.
Back to talking about deaths, when a coal miner dies, he is someone who chose to be a coal miner(well maybe not in China), if an accident happened at a coal power plant, well there would be limited problems and it would effect those who chose to work there.
When a nuclear reactor goes critical, the entire surrounding area can become completely uninhabitable, people who have NOTHING to do with nuclear, made no choice to use, work for or be involved can have their houses made uninhabitable, can give them cancer, can effect entire industries, entire regions.
Chernobyl is one thing, others have been a problem, when you get a full scale nuclear melt down in a reactor that is closer to a major city you'll see a more major problem.
The fundamental problem with nuclear reactors is that for them to not be entire disasters in the long term they have to be completely infallible, humans are not infallible, every time someone states nothing can go wrong because they thought of everything something else they didn't think of goes wrong... it's that simple. Humans aren't infallible, thus a nuclear reactor CAN NOT BE INFALLIBLE, ever, it is actually impossible and when the results of a nuclear reactor going wrong could be a city becoming uninhabitable and 10k's of cases of cancer and extremely dangerous clean up. It IS a bad idea, it will always be a bad idea. Every single time I see someone talk about how safe it is they pull out the "but we have experience, we've thought of everything" argument and it is always ridiculous.
Even ignoring the thinking of everything, any bolt can fail, anything can be made badly and the world is full of contractors and huge corporations who cut corners because they think they can increase profits. Bridges have collapsed because a company cut corners, sky scrapers from reputable builders have mistakes found that could lead to complete failure.
When NOTHING is infallible, ever, that is a simple a basic truth in life, then you should NEVER make anything where the result of a complete disaster has so much potential for bad. If/when a coal mine explodes, it has no long term implications for the entire country or region, 1k people might die in a mine but there is NO risk of 10k people dying, or 1million people getting cancer, or a town being made uninhabitable.
There ARE situations in which coal mining has led to towns becoming uninhabitable, coal mining in the Appalachians is a very good example but only of unsafe practices from companies looking to cut corners. Slower/safer normal mining(digging slowly) would lead to little to no risk of towns/environmental disasters. The slurry pools from literally blowing the tops off of mountains is not indicative of coal mining but shady companies cutting corners(and completely corrupt politicians).
Soldato
Very expensive though.
I just stuck them into my spreadsheet:
The 100% Nuclear tariff I'm already on happens to be the cheapest
.
Soldato
Exactly. If you design a Nuclear plant well, build it to a good modern design, build it away from an Earthquake zone, and train the people running it... then they're perfectly safe
.Two good links to read http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ear...000-subsidy-for-UK-every-job-they-create.html and http://www.talkcarswell.com/home/the-case-for-wind-is-running-out-of-puff/2823.
So by your logic, let's just stop worrying about anything structural, as no matter how many worst case scenarios we induce to conduct tests, we'll always miss something.
I was speaking with someone from Boeing a couple months back and he oversaw some part of the stress analysis and testing of the wings for the 787-9. He was saying that up to right that moment, the original wings built for testing were still in the lab with various load cases and environmental conditions imposed on them, in order to prove that not only they can survive some scenario once, but constantly, without having to buy new aircraft. So you'll be amazed on the amount of scenarios, even unrealistic ones, being thought of, for something that can kill 420 passengers (not taking into account the fact that it might crash into a civilian area), leave alone a nuclear reactor, that can kill in the thousands if not more.
But fine, I'll go hang my engineering degree, as by your logic, no matter what we do, we'll fail.
Soldato
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2012
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- 8,339
But fine, I'll go hang my engineering degree, as by your logic, no matter what we do, we'll fail.
We will fail, he's right on that score. It's how we deal with it and move on with a lesson learned thats how technology wins the day.
Last big nuclear disaster was much better managed compared to the one before it, possibly because we'd learned radiation isn't fun.
Death statistics always seem at odds to me, because you can say x thousand died to this and y thousand died to that, oh how pointless. War outstrips them all but for some reason we keep doing that regardless. At least the western world has opened its eyes to health and safety these days.
It depends on how you define failure though. I'm not saying that there aren't going to be any scenarios where a reactor won't overload for whatever reason, but that overload will be calculated at the maximum level at which it can be prevented and measures put in place. (i.e. if the blast alone will knock down whatever walls you have around to keep radiation in, then it makes sense to design your radiation "defenses" up to that point, after that any design improvement is irrelevant).
Again, I'm in a whole different industry, but my line of work is making sure that whatever flies will withstand the amount of G-Forces that the human body can withstand, all whilst making sure humans will not get injured, so we are certifying something to withstand a worst case scenario, an aircraft crashing, cause we know it happens, however from a point onward, when we know that from the G's alone the human body has no chance of survival, there's no point for us to have products above that level.
As I said before, when such thorough calculations take place for something that will at the most kill 500? (not taking into account ground casualties), imagine how much more thorough they must when designing nuclear reactors.
So no, we will not fail, especially nowadays that with a nice simulation you can check any possible scenario and weakness a structure might have, and then focus to the few thousands of worst case scenarios by doing physical tests as well.
Planning and getting a connection is the problem faceing many who want to venture into green Energy.
My father in law is a sought after chap when it comes to getting connections on these sites and he is working Non stop! Its very much what you know AND who you know to get the connections these days.