Energy suppliers... choice between coal/gas/wind/solar/etc?

drunkenmaster said:
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).
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Your very Anti Nuclear...
 
Diagro said:
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.
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If your lucky enough to have the infrastructure. Local grid capacity is full around here, large industry cant expand or invest in the area due to it.

Just look up mid wales connection project and the nimby lieing *******s shouting and screaming over that.

Disgusting when Powys is the largest yet one of the poorest county's in wales. Of course our local MP and AM jump on the band wagon with the loud shouty types, and our local media wont print anything to the contrary.
 
M1k3H said:
It depends on how you define failure though
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i'm not disagreeing with you, i define failure as the same problem happening twice with the same cause and the same result.

in your example with aircraft, there's the case of the comet having problems with fatigue, because of this you now test for exactly that scenario and it's nowhere near the problem it once was.
 
SlyReaper said:
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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Not completely sure why you referenced me for that reply, perhaps it was simply that I mentioned nuclear at all.

I was not comparing and will not compare nuclear to coal, that is redundant.

I wasn't referring to directly related human deaths, either.

What about the many square kilometers of farmland that is unusable for centuries?

This is only a handful of "mistakes"... expanding the nuclear base expands the risk of that happening more within the time frame of other issues not having been resolved, increasing this.

Have you noticed the reports of the damage Fukushima did to the water population surrounding it?

Your view seems very short sighted and quite limited in its perspective of the wider repercussions.




How many deaths have been caused by solar panel creation?

Perhaps you could get the odd silly sod who fell of his roof, or maybe the odd one fell on someone when it broke or was mounted improperly? I'm unsure of the specifics of the production process, however there may be some there.

What about solar tower builds? We have plenty of space for these across the globe and power transmission capabilities are acceptable for it.

It makes so much more sense to invest in these builds than it does in increasing the nuclear footprint.

Of course I'm not saying all nuclear reactors should be immediately decommissioned... I wouldn't mind it but I know it won't happen as that would be too expensive for those who "own" them. Let them finish their lifecycle and don't renew them... simples.

Invest that money in smarter technology that doesn't create such waste and doesn't have the fallout capability.

Diagro said:
Your very Anti Nuclear...
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I am too... you state that almost as an accusation for no perceivable purpose? Almost like preferring non-nuclear alternatives is a bad thing... :confused:
 
but whilst you are right that several square kilometers are inhabitable for decades - we have lots of square kilometers we can allocate safely for this and yet that area is as good as gone - look at the other carbon sources though - they spew their rubbish into teh air and contribute to a worsening of the global environment- everyone is affected and across the board many people die from this type of pollution.

A set of solar panels on every house in the UK and then nuclear all the way. Store all the junk in a small area until tech catches up to help deal with it
 
crinkleshoes said:
Not completely sure why you referenced me for that reply, perhaps it was simply that I mentioned nuclear at all.

I was not comparing and will not compare nuclear to coal, that is redundant.

I wasn't referring to directly related human deaths, either.

What about the many square kilometers of farmland that is unusable for centuries?

This is only a handful of "mistakes"... expanding the nuclear base expands the risk of that happening more within the time frame of other issues not having been resolved, increasing this.

Have you noticed the reports of the damage Fukushima did to the water population surrounding it?

Your view seems very short sighted and quite limited in its perspective of the wider repercussions.




How many deaths have been caused by solar panel creation?

Perhaps you could get the odd silly sod who fell of his roof, or maybe the odd one fell on someone when it broke or was mounted improperly? I'm unsure of the specifics of the production process, however there may be some there.

What about solar tower builds? We have plenty of space for these across the globe and power transmission capabilities are acceptable for it.

It makes so much more sense to invest in these builds than it does in increasing the nuclear footprint.

Of course I'm not saying all nuclear reactors should be immediately decommissioned... I wouldn't mind it but I know it won't happen as that would be too expensive for those who "own" them. Let them finish their lifecycle and don't renew them... simples.

Invest that money in smarter technology that doesn't create such waste and doesn't have the fallout capability.



I am too... you state that almost as an accusation for no perceivable purpose? Almost like preferring non-nuclear alternatives is a bad thing... :confused:
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I focussed on coal because it's the biggest source of energy production worldwide. But you don't want to talk about coal? Okay, let's broaden our horizons.

Energy Source Mortality Rates; Deaths/yr/TWh

Coal - world average, 161
Coal - China, 278
Coal - USA, 15
Oil - 36
Natural Gas - 4
Biofuel/Biomass - 12
Peat - 12
Solar/rooftop - 0.44-0.83
Wind - 0.15
Hydro - world, 0.10
Hydro - world*, 1.4
Nuclear - 0.04

* Includes the 170,000 deaths from the failure of the Banquao Reservoir Dam in China in 1975

Source, first result in a google search.

This list is good because it actually adjusts the numbers for the amount of energy actually produced. Coal is WAAAY up top there. Oil and natural gas are better, renewables much better still. But the best of the lot? Oh look at that, it's nuclear. In absolute terms, of course, solar panels and wind turbines are safer, but they produce so little energy that their deaths per TWh numbers are inflated.

But okay, you don't want to measure how harmful it is by how many people it kills. Seems a perfectly reasonable metric to me, what would you prefer? Environmental impact? Again, nuclear is negligible here compared to the massive environmental damage caused by burning fossil fuels. Fossil fuels create greenhouse gases that cause global temperatures to rise. This creates less predictable weather patterns, which in turn causes crops to fail, low-lying areas to flood more frequently, etc. You've been advocating pretty strongly for renewables so I'm assuming you're not a climate change denier?

Compare that to nuclear, where it's a bit of a nuisance encasing and burying the nuclear waste. In the distant future, the day may come when we're using so much energy and producing so much nuclear waste that we start running out of places to bury it. But it is not this day. And by then, I sincerely hope something better has come along. Fusion, maybe.

The problem is, renewables aren't an option. The option right now is nuclear or fossil fuels. Only they are capable of producing enough energy to meet the needs of 7 billion human beings, including those who live in such abject poverty that they don't have electricity yet. Barring a major technological breakthrough, or a feat of staggering engineering ambition (like covering the Sahara in PV panels), renewables like wind and solar will never come close to meeting those needs. Don't get me wrong, I'm hugely in favour of investment in these technologies, but I don't see how we can ever rely on them 100%.
 
Decided to post in here for lack of any other thread. Tesla are set to announce battery storage for houses and rumour is it they are going to blindside energy companies and announce large scale grid storage.
Shame the announcement is at 4am as it would be worth a watch to see what exactly they're releasing.
 
It's interesting, sure... only thing is... people generally fail to consider the cost (environmental) of the batteries to produce.

It's estimated the entire life of your average V8 muscle car puts lets problematic materials into the atmosphere than simply the productions of the batteries for a Prius...
 
Glaucus said:
Decided to post in here for lack of any other thread. Tesla are set to announce battery storage for houses and rumour is it they are going to blindside energy companies and announce large scale grid storage.
Shame the announcement is at 4am as it would be worth a watch to see what exactly they're releasing.
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Tesla unveils batteries to power homes

Interesting move, could be very useful for those with solar panels already.
 
So we just flood a bunch of valleys and create more dams?

That's going to go down well....

I like how you choose wind in the UK with hydro in france as your example too :rolleyes:

wind is also currently supplying 15% of the UK's energy.
 
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