Nukes and Coal

[SHRED]

These 2 "sources" need to be off the table completely.
We need to move in the direction of green, localized, neighborhood scale energy production.

Centralized mega corporations that hold all the cards and monopolize energy prices/distribution have been shown to be dangerous and criminal in both distribution and price fixing.


---

[razzleberry]

1. what does you/your-company offer to be on the table?

price list. please

[SHRED]

2. I think you mean...

... "country".

just sayin'

[razzleberry]

14. no,I meant you

if you want something,
you should supply the alternate.

and while you are at it,
for your information,
there are millions of people
without electricity.
You might want to take
of them, first

[Dogmudgeon]

3. Who makes the solar cells and wind plants?

Who makes the solar cells and wind plants?

What chemicals are used to manufacture the solar cells, especially thin-film?

How much of those chemicals will we use to increase production 500 times? A thousand? Two thousand?

How many wind plants are needed to replace a one-gigawatt coal-burning plant or nuclear reactor? Then multiply by ONE THOUSAND for our anticipated draw of 1000 GWe in 2050, Greenpeace's authorized target date.

How much concrete is required for a wind plant pylon? Then multiply by the above figure.

How much LAND is required for a wind plant? Then multiply by the above figure.

What kind of power storage technology will be needed to even out gaps in wind or solar production? What will it cost?

What does the Third World do?

What happens when the next generation of environmentalists turns against solar and wind schemes?

Can you answer these questions? I can. It took me nearly a year of research to find them out, I still keep updating my studies, and when I tell my fellow lefties what I discovered, they rant at me, insult me, and gossip about me behind my back -- especially the self-styled "peace activists". Several have even gone after me from other websites.

Perhaps this time, it will be different.

--p!
Perhaps I will get a pony for Christmas, too.

[SHRED]

4. damn

Thanks for "sending me back" to the workshop.

I got work to do for sure in my quest for "Utopia".

[Dogmudgeon]

5. It's a tough job. And it'll break your heart.

Not for nothing is this an energy crisis. It drives people mad just thinking about it. I guarantee you will have at least half of your pre-existing ideas shaken loose, no matter what position you come from. Be prepared to sweat.

If you need any pointers to information, just ask around here; several of us have extensive study in the area, and a variety of different points of view. Although most of us are pro-nuclear, less than a quarter of the issues involve nukes at all, and there is no escaping the fundamental problems from either side.

Like the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, this is an infrastructure issue -- just as much as an environmental issue. We neglected to plan and build for the future for, oh, about 40 years. And now, we will pay.

We can either work hard and enthusiastically to meet the challenge, or we can work hard and miserably to avoid it.

I see you are a Union supporter. We are going to need strong Unions as we rebuild -- and long after. Many members of the AFL-CIO (etc.) have been aware of the situation for some time now, and I hope they start to carry some serious weight around the union halls.

--p!

[bananas]

9. Start here

Read these two links:
Keystone report: http://climateprogress.org/2007/06/18/nuclear-power-no-climate-cure-all/
"Carbon wedges" co-author 2004 interview: http://theclimategroup.org/index.php/viewpoint/stephen_pacala/

[losthills]

6. Nukes and Coal--"off the table completely."

Agreed.
That is the important starting point for planning a clean energy future.

[NNadir]

7. It's no such thing. It's the endpoint for finishing a program of denial.

These slogans are now more than 30 years old.

This is the end point. What we are living through now is nothing more than the chickens coming home to roost.

Of course, some people will look at the chicken shit and say, "Oh look!!!! It could be biofuel!"

The OP shows the depths of laziness of the entire "program."

[jpak]

10. Yup

Both are *dangerous* and unsustainable...

But thinking like this would destroy a perfectly good straw man argument...

[Trillo]

8. I like green and localized and low pollution...

However, I'd also hate to see disruptions.

I've been wondering about the costs, since someone asked me recently, and a particular nuclear advocate on this board seems to think that nuclear energy is ---> FREE <--- (okay, I'm mocking him/her) or the lowest cost energy bar none.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&as_qdr=all&q=+nuclear+power+cost&btnG=Search

It doesn't seem that there is agreement on the FREE-NESS of nuclear energy.

[TheWraith]

11. Nobody ever said it was free. But it's the cheapest.

The main costs are in the initial construction, and eventually decomissioning the plant (for which funds have to be held in trust). In between, it's by far the cheapest form of energy generation, requiring minimal fuel.

[losthills]

13. You forgot

the costs of mining the uranium and enriching it, and the costs of dealing with nuclear waste.

These costs are in money, in environmental degradation, and in carbon emissions.

If you want to make an honest to people, you need to start including those costs...

[TheWraith]

18. Not forgotten at all.

"the costs of mining the uranium and enriching it,"

Which are factored into the cost of the fuel.

"and the costs of dealing with nuclear waste."

Also factored into operating costs.

"These costs are in money, in environmental degradation, and in carbon emissions."

Certainly no more so than, say, coal mining.

"If you want to make an honest to people, you need to start including those costs..."

That sentance not sense make.

[NNadir]

12. Pollution is best measured as an external cost.

The external costs of fuel, as I never tire of pointing out, is given in figure 9, which is pretty straight foreward:

http://www.externe.info/expoltec.pdf

No nuclear advocate has ever said that nuclear energy is free. What nuclear advocates say is that the costs of nuclear energy are lower than any other form of energy that is scalable on a ten to one hundred exajoule scale and is climate change gas free.

It is cheaper than all of the make believe forms of energy that have not gottent to an exajoule because they are either too expensive (solar) or too unreliable (wind).

It is remarkable that after almost 30 years of cheering beginning with the idiotic paper of the anti-nuclear hydrogen hypercar salesman Amory Lovins (Foreign Affairs, 1976) that the really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really cool forms of energy have never produced an exajoule individually in a 470 exajoule world.

If you don't know what you're talking about, google. If you do know what your talking about, expect to hear criticism from lazy people who don't know what they're talking about.

The anti-nuclear future has arrived. It's here. There are consequences of dangerous fantasies and the planet is choking to death, now not some day.

The Romanian Cernovoda CANDU unit one reactor has the lowest operating on the planet, about 1.25 eurocents/kw-hr. The US Catawba reactor set a record for operating costs of 1.8 cents/kw-hr.

Both reactors produce more energy than the entire world out put of solar energy, and both have done so without a single loss of life and in the space of a few small buildings.

If you are free to dump your wastes without cost, like the coal industry, coal can roughly approximate the costs of nuclear, but if nuclear safety requirements were required for coal, the coal industry would collapse in a day, rather like a Utah mine.

The Scherrer Institute has produced many papers on combined external and internal costs (their research source was not google) and have produced results like these:

http://e-collection.ethbib.ethz.ch/ecol-pool/journal/psi_energie_spiegel_e/9_2003.pdf

Tough shit.

It's too bad that the anti-nuclear industry was able to pull the wool over the eyes of the world in the 1970's and 1980's because the bill has come due, now.

[Kolesar]

15. How are we going to heat the ten of millions of old homes and businesses in America?

What is going to replace the natural gas furnace in my house as natural gas supplies are depleted? The last furnace we bought put out 25000 or 60000 BTUs (high or low mode). It occasionally goes into high mode in January. We have a 5000 degree day heating season, IIRC.

The choices seem to be something on the electrical grid. That, or put up with cold dwellings like post-war Europe or abandon the existing cities.

[Dead_Parrot]

16. Going without may not be impossible

For instance, a quick search on the internets reveals that the first person* to live in Cleveland was Lorenzo Carter, whose cabin probably did not include A/C and a gas furnace. He probably wore some sort of sweater and/or coat. This suggests C/H & A/C may not be a requirement, per se, just a comfort... :)


* By "first person", I do of course mean the first white person. Other people may have lived around the Cuyahoga River at some point prior to that, but obviously they don't count.

[Kolesar]

17. Clevelanders could burn the trees in "The Forest City", then the furniture like in "Doctor Zhivago"

...after the revolution and their economic collapse. I would expect that Lorenzo Carter burned wood for heat and trapped and hunted for food. From what I recall, there were scant or no indigenous people anywhere near Cleveland when the Europeans colonized the area. I did find an arrowhead in my garden, though, which is plenty cool.