Bill Gates on 60 Minutes just now.

[c-rational]

He is telling us what NNadir has been saying all along. Without nuclear we will never solve our climate crisis, regardless of policy shifts. We just need too much energy that cannot be generated with renewables today.

An interesting point he made is that the sell of this will almost be as difficult as the development of the next generation reactors.

[SharonAnn]

1. OK, then how do we deal with nuclear waste?

[Salviati]

2. A hell of a lot more easily than carbon waste

That's for sure.

I believe that if you've got a new generation of reactors, that are designed from the ground up to be the backbone of an integrated power system, and not just an offshoot, or in support of a nuclear weapons program, then the issue of nuclear waste is reduced a lot, but I'm no expert, just remembering things that I've read over the years.

The important thing to consider though is that we're not comparing nuclear power to nothing, we're comparing it to the system that we've got right now, which is untenable and giving us diffuse problems that are very difficult to deal with. In comparison, dealing with point source, localized issues is a benefit.

[Freethinker65]

3. Recycle as much as you currently can like France

Invest in research and development ideas on how best to deal with (encapsulate and store) what is left for future when technology catches up.

[c-rational]

5. If we keep going as we are now carbon will cause cataclysmic human carnage. This from

a civil/environmental engineer who watched CO2 levels climb from the early 70's and spent years on design and construction of municipal wastewater treatment projects- i.e. things to help humankind. I unfortunately feel we have passed the tipping point and can only mitigate coming repercussions, but we should all do what we can. That goes to not using a single dixie cup if we can.

Downthread the waste issue is discussed. It must be dealt with properly and not swept under the rug. However, the clock is ticking and time is running out. One last point is that most people are not aware of how many deaths are caused each year by fossil fuel pollution.

[progree]

9. Latest number on air pollution: 8.7 Million deaths in 2018

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127143082

'Invisible killer': fossil fuels caused 8.7m deaths globally in 2018, research finds, The Guardian, 2/9/21

Air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil was responsible for 8.7m deaths globally in 2018, a staggering one in five of all people who died that year, new research has found.

Countries with the most prodigious consumption of fossil fuels to power factories, homes and vehicles are suffering the highest death tolls, with the study finding more than one in 10 deaths in both the US and Europe were caused by the resulting pollution, along with nearly a third of deaths in eastern Asia, which includes China. Death rates in South America and Africa were significantly lower.

Scientists have established links between pervasive air pollution from burning fossil fuels and cases of heart disease, respiratory ailments and even the loss of eyesight. Without fossil fuel emissions, the average life expectancy of the world’s population would increase by more than a year, while global economic and health costs would fall by about $2.9tn.

[Merlot]

4. Bill Gates also believes in school privatization

Just because he's rich and has an opinion doesn't make it true.

[c-rational]

6. I agree on both counts - school privatization is a bad idea, not just poor, and wealth does not

make wisdom.

[Shermann]

7. His false assertions regarding schools also don't make his assertions about energy false nt

[Cicada]

8. Global warming might kill billions, nukes might help. Do it.

[Rhiannon12866]

10. And here's the video from 60 Minutes:

Bill Gates: The 2021 60 Minutes interview

"Without innovation, we will not solve climate change. We won't even come close," Gates says. Anderson Cooper reports for 60 Minutes.

[progree]

11. And the transcript plus. Warning: the "so-called renewable" energy haters won't like this.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bill-gates-climate-change-60-minutes-2021-02-14/

Stuff in double parenthesis like ((this)) are Progree's additions, as is all emphasis.

But of all his green investments, Gates has spent the most time and money pursuing a breakthrough in nuclear energy -- arguing it's key to a zero carbon future.

He says he's a big believer in wind and solar and thinks it can one day provide up to 80% of the country's electricity, but Gates insists unless we discover an effective way to store and ship wind and solar energy, nuclear power will likely have to do the rest. Energy from nuclear plants can be stored so it's available when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.

... In 2008 he founded TerraPower, a company that has re-designed a nuclear reactor.

Anderson Cooper: This is your prototype?

Bill Gates: Exactly. TerraPower's Natrium Reactor. This is a rendering, we haven't built it yet. But here's the nuclear island right here.

Anderson Cooper: This is the reactor?

Bill Gates: Exactly.

((there's a picture of it, and it's sitting on a table the size of a ping pong table, covering about 1/3 of the table's area. It looks like a fuel rod assembly, it's not the whole reactor))

... In October, the Department of Energy awarded TerraPower $80 million to build one of the first advanced nuclear reactors in the U.S.

... ((then while discussing how he has and flies a private plane))

You know, I switched to an electric car ((Gasp!)). I use solar panels ((Gasp!)). I'm paying a company that actually at a very high price, can pull a bit of carbon out of the air and stick it underground. And so I'm offsetting my personal emissions.

Anderson Cooper: Those are called carbon offsets?

Bill Gates: Right. So you know, it's costing like $400 a ton. It's like $7 million.

Anderson Cooper: So you're paying $7 million a year to offset your carbon footprint?

Bill Gates: Yup.

Obviously the above isn't the entire transcript. There's several other green technologies discussed, I just included the nuclear and "so-called" renewable energy stuff in the above, as well as the carbon offset stuff which was kind of interesting -- actually pulling CO2 out of the air and sticking it in the ground, as opposed to airy-fairy tree-planting stuff that Bolsonaro or lightning or Trump types will just burn or cut down.

In 2016, the U.S. per capita emissions was 15.50 metric tons. So if we each did this, it would cost $400 X 15.50 = $6200 per person per year on average.

As for the reactor, I left out the stuff about how it is inherently safe, cooled by liquid sodium, is not high pressure, all assembled in a factory etc. Stuff you can read all the bubbly boo at https://www.terrapower.com/

A competitor in futuristic advanced nuclear concepts is https://www.nuscale.com/

By the way, they both say they are being developed to work well with heavily solar and wind systems. So it's not true that only fossil fuel plants can back up solar and wind.

[NNadir]

13. If I thought Bill Gates was oracular, it might disturb me. However I don't do...

..."appeal to authority" arguments.

If I did, maybe I'd let Bonnie Raitt tell me about nuclear power.

We just spent close to 3 trillion of dollars on solar and wind energy, more money than Bill Gates has. It has failed, absolutely, to address climate change in any meaningful way. The so called "exponential growth" of so called "renewable energy" doesn't even match the growth in one dangerous fossil fuel, dangerous natural gas, in this benighted century of trying the same thing over and over and over and over and expecting a different result.

It would be a mistake to assume that Bill Gates is an all seeing God. He's a successful businessman with a lot of money, and that's all.

Even he has to genuflect at the altar of "renewable energy will save us," although the current concentrations of carbon dioxide suggest that the temple where the altar resides is more about faith than about reality.

He's right that we require nuclear power to address climate change. He's wrong that so called "renewable energy" works. Clearly it hasn't worked, it isn't working and it won't work.

That's a fact.

Facts matter.

[progree]

14. I forgot, what were the CO2 atmospheric concentrations at Mauna Loa when the first

commercial nuclear power plants went into service in the 1950's, and what are they now?

EDIT: And how much is being built now?

The World Nuclear Industry, Status Report, 2020, September 2020 (WNISR2020)
https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/IMG/pdf/wnisr2020-v2_lr.pdf

EDIT: Seems like, unfortunately, a lot of it boils down to an overweight on economics: wind and solar didn't become economically competitive (with subsidies and arguably without in some systems) until a few years ago, while new nuclear went from quite competitive to expensive boondoggles somehow, especially in the West, but not only in the West.

[NNadir]

15. Nuclear power was stopped cold from growing around 1990.

It did so by appeals to fear and ignorance.

Despite these appeals it has consistently produced about 28 examples of primary energy for more than 30 years using basically 1960s and 1970s technology.

We have just experienced half a century of wild cheering for solar and wind energy. This result was obtained without ever considering why humanity abandoned so called renewable energy beginning in the 19th century.

Jim Hansen calculated in 2013 that at that time, 8 years ago, that nuclear power had prevented 31 billion tons of CO2 emissions, which was equivalent to about a year's worth then. It's much worse now.

After half a century of cheering for wind and solar energy, hoopla about batteries produced on the back of the third world, vast lanthanide mines, steel and aluminum and diesel trucks to haul all this shit into wilderness areas, when has ever the magic solar and wind industry combined produced even 20 exajoules of the 600 exajoules of energy we now consume in a single year?

Of course in 1800 so called renewable energy provided all of humanity's energy needs. Of course, back then, most of humanity, even more so than today, lived short miserable lives of dire poverty despite having less than 1/7th modern population.

I'm very sorry however that I'm not a reactionary. I consider myself progressive in my own way.

The "failure" of nuclear energy to have prevented climate change and hundreds of millions of air pollution deaths since 1990 is not technical. It is social and political.

Engineering does not drive politics. In most cases political decisions drive engineering, for good and for bad.

Humanity made a stupid decision in the period between 1990 and 2000. We are living with the consequences.

[progree]

16. Solar and wind didn't become economically competiitve until a few years ago (with subsidies)

We have just experienced half a century of wild cheering for solar and wind energy. This result was obtained without ever considering why humanity abandoned so called renewable energy beginning in the 19th century.

The technology has changed.

I think economics has as much or more to do with nuclear's situation worldwide than overreaction to safety concerns. At least in the West, but not only in the West, all we see in new construction is grossly expensive boondoggles that take 15 years to build.

EDIT: as for the new advanced safe modular designs -- I've been reading a lot of bubbly boo since the 70's, but so far its been all "hat" and no cattle.

[NNadir]

18. Yes, electricity prices are wonderful in Texas this morning.

Very competitive.

It was a good idea for those hat and cattle people to make their energy dependent on the weather, just as it was a great idea for California to lace its fire prone areas with power lines to gather all that diffuse energy.

The fires were great for the construction industry.

The "hat" in my view is 417 ppm carbon dioxide. It covers the entire planet.

Of course I'm less interested in my electricity bill on sunny windy days than I am in the future of humanity.

I wonder how future generations will look at our bean counting.

I argue they will not forgive us nor should they.

[NNadir]

17. Oh, and about "expensive..."

The first commercial nuclear power plant in the West, Calder Hall, operated for almost 50 years.

The Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in my neck of the woods operated for 49 years. It was a gift for my father's generation to mine.

I've analyzed the average lifetime of wind turbines using the comprehensive data base available at the Danish Energy Agency's website. For future generations they are liabilities that will need to be hauled away.

The United States built more than 100 nuclear reactors in a period of 25 years while providing the lowest electricity prices in the world.

We now learn that what has already happened is impossible.

It would be interesting to learn whether the steel plants that make those wind turbine posts are required to meet the same standards to which we hold nuclear plants, that is that no one be able to even imagine, even those with limited educations, any kind of health consequence over the next 15 centuries, never mind tomorrow.

[progree]

19. On expense, yup, that was then, this is now

I hear you on the different environmental and regulatory standards being applied to nuclear compared to just about everything else.

[progree]

20. So if we replace all fossil fuel and so-called renewable with nuclear at $12 Million/MW,

the cost of Vogtle 3&4 (it might be old figure, from September 2018, but I haven't been able to find an update. $27 billion for 2X1117 MWe), and endure the at least 10 years of construction time, any idea what that would do to electric rates? Just curious if there is an estimate out there. So people can get used to it.

[NNadir]

21. Every nuclear plant built in the US now needs to meet FOAKE costs.

This is the advantage one would guess from a failure to not give engineers, in particular, an exemption from the requirement that they explain their calculations to Jackson Brown, Bruce Springsteen, and Crosby, Stills and Nash, who are energy experts as a result of consuming so much of it at "No Nukes" concerts.

I think if one were to look at the consumer electricity prices at Denmark and Germany, the highest in the OECD, and compare them to say France, we can see what the cost of continuous assembly systems and what the cost of requiring redundant systems to do what one system can do well.

But then there's "this and now" isn't there?

[progree]

22. Nuclear costs have gone way up in France since France built its system

But then there's "this and now" isn't there?

That's right. Back in the mid 70's, in the U.S., nuclear was breaking a million$ a MW. Now its $12 million a MW. Inflation has increased by factor of about 4.8 (CPI-U July 1975 to Jan 2021), so that's a 2.5-fold after-inflation increase.

Edited to add: France is having its problems too with skyrocketing costs - it's not just the U.S. E.g. Flamanville and Hinkley Point C (being constructed by EDF)

And then for the countries that are growing their carbon emissions fastest - not an easy sell for countries where most live on a few dollars a day. I imagine they will continue to burn cow dung and make do with jury-rigged diesel generators. But the sacrifice must be made.

[NNadir]

23. China just bought its 50th nuclear plant on line last week.

Last edited Tue Feb 16, 2021, 04:39 PM - Edit history (1)

It was built with endogenous infrastructure.

Most of the nuclear plants in China were built this century.

The price to be paid for cheap gas power, and the renewable energy lipstick on the gas pig will not be paid by the people in this generation who consumed the electricity. It will be paid by every generation that comes after us.

It will include the costs for cleaning up the electronic waste that every solar cell on the planet will be in 25 years.

I'm sure we're all falling all over ourselves with enthusiasm for lead based iodo perovskites. We just don't give a shit do we?

I'm consistently unimpressed by cost considerations that ignore external costs.

A nuclear plant built to last and operate 80 years is a gift to future generations. Of course we couldn't care less about future generations. This is a moral problem, not an economic one.

We think if we can charge up our stupid cobalt laced Tesla electric car at 15 cents per kilowatt when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, we've somehow discharged our moral responsibility.

I obviously hold this worldview in contempt.

[progree]

24. Well good for China, maybe you can do your "in this century" thing

for China -- should be interesting. Coal, nuclear, so-called renewable, natural gas, emissions, etc. "in this century". Also the last 5 or so years.

"I'm consistently unimpressed by cost considerations that ignore external costs."

By all means, include those where I ask how much will electricity rates change if we went all nuclear. Plus include all taxpayer subsidies. Something that will convince people to pay the however much higher utility bills.

Some excerpts from the The World Nuclear Industry, Status Report, 2020, September 2020 (WNISR2020)
https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/IMG/pdf/wnisr2020-v2_lr.pdf

I just went through and searched on China until I got bored at page 37. Then I flew through faster doing skim and stop, so it might be missing important stuff.

Many of these clips talk about world as well as China... some of the 2020 numbers are affected by Covid, although Chinese government claims their nuclear construction aren't.

The page numbers are the page numbers of the PDF file, but they appear to be the same as the page numbers in the actual report (a rarity).

I know its a mish-mash. Stuff in ((double parenthesis)) is my addition.

----------------------------------------------------------
p.14 - China continues to grow its nuclear capacity but at a slowing rate

p.19 - In 2019, nuclear power generation in the world increased by 3.7 percent of which half due to a 19 percent increase in China.
Three units were closed, not a single unit started up in the first half of 2020, including in China.

After declining for 5 years, the number of units under construction increased by 6 to 52 as of mid-2020 (incl. 15 in China) but remains well below the 69 units at the end of 2013.

In 2019, construction began on 6 reactors (incl. 4 in China), and on one in the first half of 2020 (in Turkey).

p. 20 - Startups. At the beginning of 2019, 13 reactors were scheduled for startup during the year; only six made it, three in Russia, two in China and one in South Korea. No new reactor started up worldwide in the first half of 2020, including in China.6

p. 22 - Construction Starts. In 2019, construction began on six reactors—four in China and one each in Russia and the U.K.—and in the first half of 2020 on one (in Turkey). These were the first construction starts of commercial reactors in China since December 2016. This compares to 15 construction starts in 2010 and 10 in 2013. Construction starts peaked in 1976 at 44.

p.27 - China. Nuclear power generation grew by 19.2 percent in 2019 and contributed 4.9 percent of all electricity generated in China, up from 4.2 percent in 2018. Plans for future expansion remain uncertain.

p. 32 - In China, electricity production of 406 TWh from wind alone again by far exceeded the 330 TWh from nuclear, while solar power is already at 224 TWh.

p. 37 - China’s newly installed solar capacity has recovered quickly after a year-on-year decline due to COVID-19 in the first quarter of 2020, and the half-year result is even slightly above 2019 (11.5 GW vs. 11.4 GW).35

p.40 - [In 2019] China started up only two new units after having connected seven reactors to the grid in 2018, which helped increase output by 19.2 percent in 2019.

p.47 - ((Per Table 1, China has 15 nuclear units under construction with a total capacity of 13.842 GW)).

p. 51 - ((China)) The five-year plan 2016–2020 had fixed a target of 58 GW operating and 30 GW under construction by 2020. As of mid-2020, China had 47 units with 45.5 GW operating and 15 units with 13.8 GW under construction

p.125 - there seems profound uncertainty about the future path of nuclear power in China. Nuclear Intelligence Weekly (NIW) reported in July 2020 that “China’s ultimate authority, the State Council, has mentioned almost nothing about newbuilds in its Government work plan; while the National Energy Administration (NEA) provided no details of new nuclear construction in its recent 2020 National Energy Work Guiding Opinions, unlike in previous years”.371

This uncertainty is best illustrated by ... blah blah blah

p. 126 - Another sign of uncertainty about the future of nuclear power in China is the decline in numbers. Even with these additional reactors counted by WNISR as being under construction, the current number of 15 represents a continuous decline over the corresponding numbers of 17 reported in WNISR2018 and 21 in WNISR2017.382 The decline highlights the slowdown of China’s nuclear power program, especially considering the target of the 5-Year Plan 2016–2020: the 15 units combine less than 14 GW while 30 GW were planned for as under construction simultaneously by the end of the period.

There are structural reasons for this slowdown. As previous issues of WNISR have discussed, China has been confronting a combination of overcapacity in the power market and a reduced rate of demand growth. These problems might be further compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, which, as in other countries, had a significant impact on electricity demand.383 China experienced a 7.8 percent cumulative drop in power consumption in January and February 2020.384 However, by May 2020, demand seemed to be back to pre-lockdown levels.385

A separate problem for nuclear power has been the Government’s lowering of electricity prices, especially for industrial consumers, in recent years.386 In combination with nuclear construction cost overruns, this makes the outlook for nuclear power “cloudier”.387 A more recent difficulty has arisen with the strain in U.S.-China relations and the Trump administration’s ban on most nuclear exports to China.388 This means that China is forced to avoid the use of any U.S. suppliers. A number of new-build projects in China that planned to construct AP1000 reactors are reportedly “caught in the political minefield of US-China relations due to their technology choice”.389

p. 127 - Of the 15 reactors currently under construction, ... Many of these are delayed (see Annex 5) and these delays may be part of the reason for not publicizing new construction starts.

p. 128 - Although the country was the first to be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese authorities maintain that it will not impact nuclear reactor construction.403 This remains to be seen.

p. 129 - Meanwhile, renewable energy capacity in China continues to grow at a substantially higher rate. Total installed renewable capacity increased by about nine percent from 2018 to 2019, going from 695 GW to 759 GW; wind capacity expanding from 185 GW in 2018 to 210 GW in 2019, and solar capacity from 175 GW in 2018 to 205 GW in 2019. 407 ((yes yes, I know, a GW of solar or wind capacity is nowhere near the equivalent of nuclear capacity, given the difference of capacity factors, and the reliability (intermittency) issues. Also, since solar and wind combined is 415 GW in 2019, and total renewable is 759 GW, that means there is 344 GW of other renewable which is probably mostly hydro)).

p. 129 - According to the China Electricity Council, the two forms of renewable energy provided 406 TWh (wind) and 224 TWh (solar) to the grid respectively.408 These figures agree with those reported by BP.409 These have gone up by almost 11 percent and 26.6 percent compared to 2018. Electricity generated by wind continues to exceed the nuclear contribution, and solar energy is approaching two-thirds of nuclear energy’s contribution. (See Nuclear Power vs. Renewable Energy). IHS Markit estimates that in January and February 2020, due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, nuclear energy’s contribution to the grid declined by 2.2 percent whereas renewables have remained resilient, with wind and solar energy growing by 0.9 percent and 12 percent respectively.410 ((depends on which has dispatch priority, I'm guessing that wind and solar have dispatch priority over nukes))

[NNadir]

25. A gigawatt for a system with 20-30% capacity utilization is not equivalent to a gigawatt...

...of a plant that operates at 90%-100% capacity.

The unit of energy is the joule, sometimes watt-hour, not the watt.

This big lie has been going on my whole life, and still is going on.

406 TWh is 1.68 exajoules of energy, out of 600 exajoules consumed by humanity each year.

Am I supposed to be impressed? A country with about 1.4 billion people is producing 33 watts of wind power, roughly, per person from wind energy, and not necessarily at the time when anyone needs it?

The capacity utilization of wind turbines in China - all of which will need to be replaced in 20 to 30 years - can thus be calculated from the data supplied above, to be 22%. That means 78% of the time, a redundant system will need to be in place and operating.

There is zero evidence that the wind turbines are producing energy when needed, and zero information about the efficiency losses that occur when the plants are shut down, making their fixed costs stranded costs.

There is, again, a reason, that the highest electricity prices in the OECD belong to that offshore oil and gas drilling hellhole Denmark, followed by its German neighbor, where nuclear power is "too dangerous, but air pollution isn't.

Every solar cell, and every wind turbine, including those shedding microplastics off their veins day in and day out whenever they operate, will need to be replaced within 30 years.

I know a fair number of Chinese scientists, many of whom I respect greatly, but to assume that they are immune from what is a failed fad, so called "renewable energy" is to suggest they are not human.

One of the fun things I used to experience when writing at the E&E forum, where I really shouldn't hang out, is the application of the logical fallacy of appeal to popularity. I once owned a Mercury Sable, the upscale version of the Ford Taurus, advertised, honestly at the time as "America's best selling car." It was the worst car I ever owned.

It is very, very, very, very, very popular, I concede, to claim that so called "renewable energy" is great. I've been hearing it my whole adult life, and my generation consists of entirely of old people who fucked up the world and allowed the concentration of carbon dioxide to increase by over 100 ppm in their lifetimes, all the time carrying on about how "green" they are.

My lifetime:



Atmospheric CO2 at the Mauna Loa Carbon Dioxide Observatory

At least I have the guts to be ashamed, particularly because for many years, being a "good liberal" I bought hook line and sinker into the value of so called "renewable energy." I was, frankly, a pathetic ass for doing so. It was, I think, a grotesque mistake.

China has an economic interest in marketing this claim, about so called "renewable energy" being wonderful since they dig almost all of the world's lanthanides - often under horrific conditions I might add - for all those magnets for the generator parts in wind turbines that are available 22% of the time in China, and at similar capacity utilization elsewhere. Probably the wind turbine junk is even cheaper in China, since they dig all the coal for all the coke for all the steel in all those wind turbine posts. They also dig most of the world's cadmium for cadmium selenide solar cells; their children eat the dust from those mines.

But the appeal to popularity argument doesn't hold water. That nuclear plant that came on line in China last week, the 50th, will likely be operating in the year 2080, if not longer. Since China has the worst air pollution in the world, those nuclear plants will saving lives when all those wind turbines are heaps of rotting junk leaching grease with shards of fiberglass coatings encased in the soil, um, forever.

World map of air pollution deaths, 2015:



The contribution of outdoor air pollution sources to premature mortality on a global scale (Nature 525, 367–371 (17 September 2015)

I love those nice colors over Hamburg and the Rhineland, don't you?

The people who are building nuclear plants in China are doing good for humanity. Those who are building transitory junk that babies born today will need to haul away in 25 years, not so much.

History will not forgive us, nor should it.

[progree]

26. "A gigawatt for a system with 20-30% capacity utilization is not equivalent to a gigawatt...

Last edited Tue Feb 16, 2021, 09:05 PM - Edit history (1)

...of a plant that operates at 90%-100% capacity." < - Edited to include this and the quote marks

I agree, a point I made in my #24 above in double (());s

p. 129 - Meanwhile, renewable energy capacity in China continues to grow at a substantially higher rate. Total installed renewable capacity increased by about nine percent from 2018 to 2019, going from 695 GW to 759 GW; wind capacity expanding from 185 GW in 2018 to 210 GW in 2019, and solar capacity from 175 GW in 2018 to 205 GW in 2019. 407 ((yes yes, I know, a GW of solar or wind capacity is nowhere near the equivalent of nuclear capacity, given the difference of capacity factors, and the reliability (intermittency) issues. Also, since solar and wind combined is 415 GW in 2019, and total renewable is 759 GW, that means there is 344 GW of other renewable which is probably mostly hydro)).

"The unit of energy is the joule, sometimes watt-hour, not the watt."

Nobody said it was.

[progree]

27. Maybe you should write to Bill Gates the reasons why so-called renewables have not worked,

cannot work, and will never work

It is very, very, very, very, very popular, I concede, to claim that so called "renewable energy" is great. I've been hearing it my whole adult life, and my generation consists of entirely of old people who fucked up the world and allowed the concentration of carbon dioxide to increase by over 100 ppm in their lifetimes, all the time carrying on about how "green" they are.

And from https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127142772#post8

Guess what? Despite 50 years of wild cheering for it, and the expenditure, again, of trillions of dollars - this on a planet where more than 3 billion people lack access to improved sanitation - so called "renewable energy" didn't save the world. It isn't saving the world. It won't save the world. The reason is physics, extremely low energy to mass ratios.

I think Bill Gates can see through specious logic though, I think you have to do better than point to Mauna Loa, "despite 50 years of wild cheering" for renewable energy, that proves it doesn't work. That tiresome canard doesn't impress anyone, whether directed to renewables or nuclear.

Wind and solar didn't get to be anywhere near economical until a few years ago, so nobody was building much of anything until about a decade ago.

We have just experienced half a century of wild cheering for solar and wind energy. This result was obtained without ever considering why humanity abandoned so called renewable energy beginning in the 19th century.

I don't think that will impress Mr. Gates either.

I think if you sent him the proof that "the reason is physics, extremely low energy to mass ratios.", it would turn him and a lot of other people around. On a dime. Given that his audience is several orders of magnitude larger than that of rando message board pundits, it would probably get much more noticed if he were to speak of the shortcomings and environmental damage of so called renewable energy.

President Biden too, who has only paid some lip service to the advanced nuclear concepts, but much more to so-called renewables.

They might want to see the economics and risks of replacing everything with one technology too.

[NNadir]

30. No, I couldn't care less what Bill Gates thinks.

He of course, couldn't care less what I think, but again, I'm not into "appeal to authority arguments."

I claim I'm looking at something called "data." Do you need me to repeat the references I always repeat because I'm such a stupid ass? Would it matter if I did?

You are free, of course, to declare that solar and wind are economic wonders while not explaining why consumer electricity prices in Germany and Denmark are the highest in the OECD. Everyone knows that solar and wind are cheap when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, so cheap that electricity prices in places go negative so that no one gets any return on investment except for subsidized people getting feed in tariffs. It's always to have two systems to do what one can do, since it gives accountants plenty of time to write about stranded fixed costs.

Nor are you willing to explain why wonderful renewable energy was abandoned in the 19th century on a planet with only one billion people on it.

I fully understand that you, Bill Gates, and everyone in the E&E forum is thrilled with the vast success of reactionary return to renewables and how it's eliminated climate change. Why, for the last 18 years here, I've been hearing all about it. In the week beginning February 10, 2002, the year I signed up for DU, the concentration of CO2 was 372.89, and now, because of all the hard work people have expended on convincing me that I have no right to object to anything Bill Gates says, as of last week, it was 416.91.

I'm sure though, we're making progress. Aren't we?

Yeah, that 3 trillion dollars stopped it in it's tracks, and it's so...so...so...so...inexpensive, whenever the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, all 12 exajoules per year out of 600. Very inexpensive, even when the coasts of major continents burn up and we have to string all new wires to make them light up again.

I, um, seem to be hung up on the very stupid and obviously mindless observation that "by 2000," (which was the year of the renewable nirvana was predicted when I was a kid) according to the spreadsheet I keep with all of the weekly data reported at Mauna Loa, that the ten year week to week comparisons were averaging in 1999, 15.26 ppm (1.52 ppm /year) over 1989, before we spent 3 trillion dollars on solar and wind, and, um, in 2020, the year just passed, it was 24.13 over 2010, 2.41 ppm/year.

The week beginning February 7, 2021, the figure was 25.27 ppm over the same week of 2011, the third highest 10 year increase ever recorded at Mauna Loa, but, but, but, I'm just being a nudge, lacking in enthusiasm for this great exercise in mining, the so called "renewable energy" industry that is taking the world by storm, not that all these storms are necessarily all that wonderful, but don't worry, be happy. Here we mean "storm" in a good way. All of the top 25 highest 10 year week to week records took place in the last 3 years, 14 of them in 2020 and all of this winning is making me so happy.

I think if we all agree that solar and wind are great, and that we should throw another 10, 15, 20 trillion at it while not giving a rat's ass about the 2 billion people who lack access to improved sanitation, well, who cares about them? They can't afford Teslas.

I mean those kids who dig cobalt for our batteries, they really don't need a place to shit, do they?

I mean even the infamous anti-nuke Benjamin Sovacool, has tiny little moral qualms about that, not that I consider him the brightest bulb on the planet; clearly I don't so consider him. I loved though, his Ph.D. thesis with all those anonymous "authorities" he interviewed on his way to become the kind of "expert" who could say to us that we should mine the ocean floor to get enough material for the renewable nirvana that is always just around the corner and has been since at least 1976 when Amory Lovins said we could all have solar molten salt tanks in our backyards to generate hydrogen for our hydrogen HYPErcars.

Like most anti-nukes, Sovacool turned into Ayn Rand telling us how "expensive" nuclear energy is in response to Hansen's paper on how much carbon dioxide nuclear power prevented, although historically, after being amortized, because of their long life times, most of the 100 US nuclear plants turned into cash cows after being paid off, and provided very cheap, reliable energy, to the generations after the generations who built and paid for them began dying off. But I'm being a dick. Who cares what we leave for the babies born yesterday on February 15, 2021? It is their duty to go 100% renewable even though we didn't, "by 2050" or "by 2075" with a destroyed atmosphere, expanded deserts, dried up river basins, copper wires strewn all over burned out landscapes and depleted ores for all the major elements, because, because, because...well...I saw it on the Greenpeace website. I'm sure they'll happily "recycle" all of our garbage, millions upon billions of tons of it and be "100% renewable" in a jiffy.

Of course, some people claim - we never would here - that people who have to dig through other people's landfills are, um, poor people, not that poor people shouldn't be thrilled to pay their electricity bills in Germany and Denmark to be all "green" just like "we" are.

Addressing poverty is no where as important to us these days as having solar cells on our roofs and batteries in our 3 electric car garages. We're very modern liberals, unlike those historical old fashioned liberal, the whiny Eleanor Roosevelt types, who thought that poverty, and not being "green" mattered.

Bill Gates pays 7 million dollars a year to be carbon neutral. He's a hero and I'm unworthy of his wisdom. Why can't the rest of us be so wonderful?

History will not forgive us, nor should it.

[progree]

31. Too bad, he has a lot bigger megaphone and influence than you do, so not giving a shit about

what he thinks is kinda, well you know, but you spends thousands of hours here and the Science Forum trying to change a few minds. Have any of them come up with the cost of an all nuclear replacement to everything? At today's costs, not the ones of decades ago?

I'm not claiming solar and wind are wonderful, never have said that in any way, nor in any shape, nor in any form. Without economic storage, they can only go so far.

But when you use specious arguments like Mauna Loa proves solar and wind don't work, and renewable abandoned in the 19th century as proof of anything (hint, the technology was different back then, and it was displaced by fossil fuels which is not acceptable now), it detracts from your better points.

When you claim the energy to mass ratio is too low to work, but provide no proof, or give us a hint at what the magic breakeven point is, that detracts too.

[NNadir]

34. I am not talking about the ability to advertise. Trump had a great deal of influence as well.

Having a big microphone does not make what one says true. The last 4 years have demonstrated this clearly.

We have a different definition of what "working" might mean.

If it's merely to say that you can light a light bulb with a solar cell at noon by getting the solar cell to push electrons through a circuit, yeah that can be done. The photocell was invented in 1954. I don't deny that.

My definition of "working" would be addressing climate change and reducing the use of dangerous fossil fuels. If this is not the goal of the solar and wind scam, the big microphone that it apparently has all around the world claiming otherwise is Trumpian.

The trillions spend on solar and wind have not, not even remotely addressed climate change.

That's a fact.

Facts matter.

It is a fact that we are now using more dangerous fossil fuels after carrying on about wind and solar for half a century, and after spending close to 3 trillion dollars on solar and wind to push electrons around at arbitrary times.

It is a fact that readings of over 416 ppm of carbon dioxide were recorded last week.

It really, really, really, really, really doesn't take much insight to show what the energy to mass ratio of so called "renewable energy" to nuclear energy is. There are tens of thousands of LCA papers written in the primary scientific literature about them all the time.

I recently, very elaborately, over in the Science forum discussed in considerable detail, the land use requirements of the very stupid and useless wind industry by doing a very, very, very, very simple straight forward calculation of electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide to make motor fuels, which as I pointed out, is a bad idea, although the paper I cited was a very, very good paper that subtly put a sense of reality into this much studied topic.

It is here: Synthesizing Clean Transportation Fuels from CO2 Will at Least Quintuple the Demand for Electricity.

An excerpt, consisting not of commentary on the paper under discussion, but my commentary:

Above we see, in figure 6, that the electric power consumed in the United States amounts to 14.2 exajoules per year. From this, we can calculate that about 400 reactors would be required to completely eliminate all carbon dioxide output connected with electricity, about 4 times as many as we built between 1965 and 1985, using primitive technology. (If, using the techniques described above, we were to raise the thermodynamic efficiency of these plants to 60%, a little over 200 would be required.)

An acre of land is equal to approximately 0.405 hectares. Thus the Diablo Canyon plant itself takes up about 5 hectares, and the surrounding land belonging to the power plant takes up about 365 hectares. The 3.1 nameplate wind turbines, which, allowing for capacity utilization of 33% as suggested in the authors' text, produces about 1 MWe on 35 hectares of land, means that to provide the same electrical power that the Diablo Canyon reactors produce would require 2280 MW * 35 hectares/MW = 79,800 hectares.

Note that this land, unlike the Diablo Canyon site, whose 365 hectares are mostly pristine, the 79,800 hectares would need to be crisscrossed with asphalt or concrete service roads.

The 19 million hectares, described above for the reduction of ethanol's carbon dioxide side product, would also be reduced. The average continuous power produced by 216 GW of power from any source at 100% capacity utilization is about 6.8 exajoules, a huge portion of the current electricity production. This would require about 200 nuclear reactors to meet, although, as I spent considerable time describing above, it would be stupid for a nuclear plant to produce electricity to reduce carbon dioxide, since thermochemical means would be far superior via high thermodynamic efficiency. But if we used the 40-50 year old technology used to design Diablo Canyon, and only produced electricity, 216 GW/(2.28 GW/nuclear plant = 95 nuclear plants would be required. At 365 hectares, mostly unused per nuclear plant, this amounts to around 35,000 hectares, most of which would be undisturbed land, or about 0.2% as much land.

Now, as someone who closely follows LCA literature and has collected thousands of papers on the topic if I've collected one, and as someone who extremely interested in climate change and approaching the end of my life thinking about it in most of my free time, I am acutely aware that about ten billion tons of carbon dioxide additions to the atmosphere are connected with land use changes, and about 35 billion tons are attributable to the rising use of dangerous fossil fuels. I also know how steel is made, how aluminum is made, how the isolation of lanthanides (and for that matter the actinides) is accomplished. Nobody makes aluminum waiting for the wind to blow to power up Hall–Héroult electrochemical plants. Nobody. Nobody fires up blast furnaces only when the wind is blowing so they can be electrochemically heated. Nobody.

If your interest is to prove that one can light a light bulb at noon with a solar cell, I concede "solar energy" works. You win. Happy?

If your interest is the same as mine - and clearly it isn't - addressing climate change, well, data is data is data is data is data and data. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere, measuring this week, at more than 416 ppm is a fact. It is also a fact that within a month, a new record will be set there for the weekly average.

Like it says on one of the t-shirts they send you with your AAAS membership, "Facts are facts."

The corollary is that facts matter.

[progree]

39. By your Mauna Loa criteria, the trillions spent on solar, wind, and nuclear have not even remotely

addressed climate change. As we engage in endless message board back-and-forths, the atmospheric GHG levels are increasing and accelerating despite many decades of wild cheering about all three. That's a fact.

I agree that nuclear would be much more effective at addressing climate change than wind/solar given the nuclear's relative efficiency and resource utilization to build, and reliability over the wind/solar.

I agree that nuclear has been and will be more effective.

I agree that nuclear's contribution has been all-but-stopped by politics and pseudo-economic comparison to the LCOE levelized cost of wind/solar energy that ignores wind/solar's myriad operational shortcomings.

But I have seen nothing that says that adding some wind/solar to a fossil fuel power system doesn't reduce the fossil fuel burning and emissions.

I've heard arguments that adding wind/solar causes fossil fuel generators to generally operate at less efficient operating points, and undergo more shutdown and startup cycles. And yes, that is true. But I've seen nothing that shows that this is overall causing the same or more fossil fuel burning than if the solar/wind wasn't there at all (in which case the fossil fuel generator has to generate the MWh that the solar/wind was).

Backing down a fossil fuel generator from a higher MW output to a lower MW output always results in lower fuel burning, based on every input-output (BTU/hr in, MW out) and incremental heat rate curve I've seen.

As for shutdown/startup cycles, those can and should be simulated too and costed out, and the ones that result in more fuel and O&M should obviously be avoided, by dumping the wind/solar instead.

All in all, I do believe that solar/wind added to a fossil-fuel burning system is resulting in less fossil fuel burning than would occur on that same system without the wind/solar. But I agree that it has been only a tiny reduction compared to global fossil fuel burning and emissions.

In a nuclear moratorium state like Minnesota, and as long as that moratorium exists, I'm unabashedly for more wind/solar and less fossil fuel.

Adding nuclear also results in fossil fuel plants operating at less efficient operating points and also more fossil fuel plant shutdowns and startups. But much fewer of the latter than with wind/solar because of the predictability of nuclear output as compared to wind/solar. And adding nuclear results in overall reduced fossil fuel consumption and emissions, more so than adding wind/solar.

I am not talking about the ability to advertise. Trump had a great deal of influence as well.
Having a big microphone does not make what one says true. The last 4 years have demonstrated this clearly.

I never equated a bigger microphone or more influence with being right or good.

I didn't say that Bill Gates's bigger megaphone and influence made him right. But if you could convince him of your viewpoint, the result would reach a lot more people than endlessly engaging in the endlessly repetitive message board back-and-forth here.

Right now, as we engage in message board polemics, there are several states with nuclear moratoriums. Including California and my state of Minnesota (I thought Minnesota had gotten rid of its moratorium, but found out yesterday apparntly it has not).

Across the U.S., several existing nuclear plants have been shut down, and more are being slated to be shut down, based on what seems to me pseudo-economics with results detrimental to both the environment and actual total costs (post 33 in this thread). A few states, I think five, have provided subsidies to keep the nuclears.

I don't know if there has been serious subsidy talk about our (Minnesota) Prairie Island and Monticello plants ... so far I don't think they are on the chopping block ... it certainly seems that Xcel management fully understands the economic and environmental contribution of these plants ... Nevertheless, I think it could happen some ways down the road. I understand that there was some talk in 2018 about "an additional $1 billion to keep its 45-year-old Prairie Island (1041 MWe) nuclear plant running and at least $420 million for its Monticello (647 MWe) nuclear plant", but haven't found anything since.

I plan on contacting my legislators and at least letting them know what I'm thinking and finding out what I can about the moratorium situation (repealing it has been discussed in the legislature, but I don't know about lately) and the situation with Monticello and Prairie Island, and what organizations are working on it.

[progree]

28. Re: China's impressive statistics, neither of these are: 406 TWh wind, 330 TWh nuclear

From the World Nuclear Industry, Status Report,

p. 32 - ((In 2019)) In China, electricity production of 406 TWh from wind alone again by far exceeded the 330 TWh from nuclear, while solar power is already at 224 TWh.

NNadir #25:

406 TWh is 1.68 exajoules of energy, out of 600 exajoules consumed by humanity each year.

In case anyone missed it, or is confused by one country's wind production being compared to the consumption of all humanity, the 406 TWh of wind generation is China's, not that of all of humanity. But I will concede that globally or just China, wind's percentage of total energy consumption is not impressive.

NNadir #25:

Am I supposed to be impressed? A country with about 1.4 billion people is producing 33 watts of wind power, roughly, per person from wind energy, and not necessarily at the time when anyone needs it?

The point is that the 330 TWh produced from nuclear isn't very impressive either. My excerpts in #24 weren't meant to impress you with China's wind or solar statistics, but that it's nuclear statistics are pretty piddling so far, I don't see a big ramp up anytime soon. And that apparently China is prioritizing so-called renewables over nuclear.

BTW, I don't think they count wind energy that is dumped or not produced because of low demand in the wind TWh production statistics.

[NNadir]

32. I remarked on them as energy. We obviously disagree mightily on how impressive less than 2 EJ...

of energy available at random times over a twenty year period that will end around the time babies born today get out of college is compared to 2 exajoules available continuously for over half a century is, this in a country of 1.4 billion people.

You may not think that dumped energy available when no one needs it is not counted in China, but there is no evidence for that. For the last 50 years, exaggeration has characterized pretty much every account of so called "renewable energy" there is. The entire industry is an exercise is selective attention.

In almost 20 years here, I will wish I had a dollar bill for every "Wind power provides (insert large percentage) of country x's power" usually referring to a few hours on a windy day.

It is notable that in almost every country, particularly a country where there are 100 million electric vehicles - most of them being scooters - peak power demand is late afternoon, early evening.

This is certainly true if one regularly checks the demand/supply curves at the CAISO website. I do this for cynical laughs to see what a rising disaster looks like, and California is an energy disaster because of appeals to and enthusiasm for insipid popular ideas. They often approach or exceed 10,000 MW of instantaneous solar power around 11 am -12 noon and all that "capacity" disappears usually by 6 pm, precisely when the demand curve is peaking. The price of solar power at midnight is infinite, something our Ayn Rand type "solar is competitive" people ignore, since they do not include either the internal or external costs of redundant systems in their dishonest calculations.

If one is comparing the total energy of a system that is unreliable and will be short lived, with a system that is completely reliable and is likely to be in place for half a century, one is engaged in bad thinking.

Again, and again, and again, and again, China will not need to replace all of its existing nuclear plants in 2040. They will need to replace every damned piece of material intense so called "renewable energy" and then, if possible, without killing large numbers of people with mining operations (which they probably won't do) and then add any new capacity.

The fact that humanity has spent half a century dancing in the streets trying to compare reliable continuous plants, like nuclear plants and for that matter plants that kill people whenever they operate, coal, gas and petroleum plants, with unreliable redundant so called "renewable" junk is a very, very, very, very clear and unambiguous answer to why we are failing completely and totally to address climate change.

[progree]

33. On reliability differences between nuclear and solar/wind, that's what I was advocating

for properly simulating the operations, which would show wind/solar in much less flattering light than just looking at the LCOE levelized cost of energy or whatever of the generators in isolation, which is what they appear to be using for pricing things at auctions these days.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127142992

((In my old Northern States Power Company generation planning days))

If we did have a lot of wind and solar, it would be stochastically modelled with high unreliability.

... Bottom line is that relatively reliable generation ((like nuclear with a well-over 90% availability factor)) got credited in the simulations much more than "when the wind blows it blows, Inshallah" generation. ((in both the loss of load probability calculations and in the total production cost of the entire system that was calculated in the simulation)).

... Edited to add: to summarize the above, in the old days, we looked at the whole thing together on an integrated basis, simulated it and costed it out.

In the new days, it seems, it's like each generator is treated as an individual in competition with other generators, also treated individually. That's silly, what matters is how they all operate together ((with the other generators in the system)) with what reliability and at what cost as compared to some alternative generation plan.

Of course on capital costs, and all other costs too, the lifetimes of what are being proposed must also be considered. The cost of the shorter-life generator's replacement must be considered so that ultimately we are comparing plans over the same number of years.

[progree]

35. "We obviously disagree mightily" (sigh, here we go again, assuming I thinking something

about something with no real evidence).

I remarked on them as energy. We obviously disagree mightily on how impressive less than 2 EJ...
of energy available at random times over a twenty year period that will end around the time babies born today get out of college is compared to 2 exajoules available continuously for over half a century is, this in a country of 1.4 billion people.

I don't recall saying they were equivalent. As both an ex-generation planner and operations planner in an electric utility, I am well aware of the differences between the different types of generation. The amount of electricity produced or joules consumed is not the entire picture, never said they were. It is but one of many metrics.

You've also presented statistics on wind, solar, nuclear, and fossil energy use and TWH generation, and I've never assumed that you thought they were equivalent, or accused you of thinking they are equivalent or something dumb like that. I'd very much appreciate the same courtesy.

You may not think that dumped energy available when no one needs it is not counted in China, but there is no evidence for that.

No evidence either that it is either that I've seen, but you are free to present it. But anyway, a lot of statistics out of China are dubious, and that goes for all types of energy, including nuclear, to make their stats look better. It happens, it's human nature.

[NNadir]

37. I apologize. I'm not a very bright guy. I interpreted the statement...

...following as a comparative statement:

The point is that the 330 TWh produced from nuclear isn't very impressive either. My excerpts in #24 weren't meant to impress you with China's wind or solar statistics, but that it's nuclear statistics are pretty piddling so far, I don't see a big ramp up anytime soon. And that apparently China is prioritizing so-called renewables over nuclear.

I failed to recognize that this is very obviously not a comparative statement, and in fact, not being very bright, I still really can't figure out how it isn't.

I also was obviously being stupid when I remarked that the same nuclear plants that are producing 330 TWh in 2020 will be doing so in 2050, unless of course, Greenpeace morons are proved right with there endless "by 2050...by 2100..." "100% 'renewable energy'" statements unlike the "by 2000" statements they made when I was a young kid who was even more stupid than I am now.

Speaking of 100%, close to that number of the existing wind turbines as of 2021 in China will not be working in 2050. They'll be landfill.

[progree]

38. OK.

[c-rational]

29. Thank you for all your commentary NNadir. I agree with your position. Difficult to argue with facts

I wish I could wave a magic wand and convice others of this truth - even many of my fellow engineers. Keep up thte good fight.

[Duppers]

12. K & R

[PETRUS]

36. found this on twitter:

Link to tweet