Nuclear fusion is still decades away from being completely workable, while wind and solar are getting increasingly efficient.
A nuclear fusion reactor will cost a lot, and I mean really a lot . Building one takes decades. When something brakes down, and it will, since it's still prototype, it's going to cost a lot. Very expensive to operate and maintain if something goes wrong.
Current nuclear reactors create nuclear waste, and are incredibly dangerous in case of an accident. These will happen. Uranium mines are very bad. It takes years to build. We can't rely another 30 years on this outdated technology. Another Fukushima will be inevitable. Man makes errors. it is not safe, it is irresponsable, espescially with the terror threat.
Coal energy is done. New energy accord this year. We can't continue down this path. Coal creates lots of smog, lots of pollution, lots of environmental hazards. Down with your life expectancy. Just look at China. It is one fucked up place. Nobody wants to live around a coal plant, but they have no choice.
Gas burns clean. Much less particulates. Much less SO2, NOx. Good energy effiency. Biological waste (human poo) sewer, compost, agricultural waste, can all be biogassed with yeast.
Windturbines are getting cheaper. They provide a lot of jobs. They have a life span of 20+ years. Look at Denmark, Scandinavia. They build the best windturbines in the world, and they export a lot of their energy. Maintenance costs for modern windmills keep getting lower.
Nuclear fusion is decades away, thorium reactors is just fanboy. nuclear fanboy '' muh cool physcis '' so '' advanced '' . Why risk .
Solar is getting better, more efficient and cheaper. They portrude not, they pollute not direct, they are practical, useful and more then 50% of houses can be made energy sustainable Solar will be so cheap and abundant in the future that most others will be become redundant.
Nuclear only for industry.
(sorry for my english)
You are wrong about nuclear fission to be honest
>>7741660
History seems to suggest otherwise
>>7741656
>Nuclear fusion is still decades away from being completely workable, while wind and solar are getting increasingly efficient.
>A nuclear fusion reactor will cost a lot, and I mean really a lot . Building one takes decades. When something brakes down, and it will, since it's still prototype, it's going to cost a lot. Very expensive to operate and maintain if something goes wrong.
You're absolutely right about ITER-style tokamaks or stellarators, but I'm getting increasingly excited for developments from lockheed martin and Helion energy that might allow us to build fusion power plants that aren't stadium-sized feats of hypercomplex, hyperexpensive engineering, but more modestly sized reactors that have a build time measured in a few years instead of a decade or more. Skepticism is certainly warranted-we all know about how eagerly people have been pursuing fusion for the last 60 years, with gradually increasing returns but quite a few false starts and dead ends-but given massive advances in our understanding of plasma physics, and in computer technology, I think we might be within striking distance of commercial viability.
>>7741669
The work-arounds you need to get intermittent power going-energy storage and advanced grid infrastructure-are pretty steep costs. it's taken a substantial degree of subsidization to get alternative nergy to the point of being somewhat viable in some areas, although i do think it's a great solution in some parts of the world and I have been studying offshore wind farms with intense interest. There is also a huge advantage to fusion in that it will let us start to play around with very high energy types of activities with ease-take water desalinization. Or building enormous CO2 scrubbers to reduce greenhouse gases. Or taking advantage of the vast quantity of electricity production to make electric cars more easily used and affordable than ever. Or building entire settlements under the ocean with ease. There's also the issue of space travel-fusion powered rockets could turn a 7 month ordeal of a journey to mars into a relatively brief 4 week jaunt.
>>7741660
My friend is a plasma physics grad student and he is pretty sceptical about nuclear fission
Nuclear power plants aren't really dangerous if everything is done correctly. Fukushima was outdated as hell and Chernobyl was caused by people being irresponsible as well. We should still continue to use them, it's a very good source of constant electrical energy. Look at Germany: they've canceled production in a lot of nuclear power plants and they have to rely on coal, which has a very bad environmental impact. Not to mention that the price of electricity has increased significantly as well.
Denmark pays the highest cost for electricity in the world
They are a prime example of how to turn a first world country into a poor socialist shithole
Where people can't afford cards, or AC
cars*
>>7741734
>poor socialist shithole
You've obviously never been to Denmark. Their life quality is much higher then in the United States. The HDI is much higher also, in the top 5 I believe. I saw a lot of Tesla's. There is not a single homeless on the street. Sure, there have high taxes, but they also have high wages and low work weeks and a big fat welfare state. They are a lot of things but poor is not one of them. Probably the best country to live as a commoner, next to Switzerland. I recommend visiting both.
>>7741738
sure m8, everything in denmark is wonderful, except when it matters, like disposable income, being able to buy a car, or getting treatment for cancer.
USA also has higher HDI
>>7741769
I'm not even going to bite it anymore
>>7741769
http://qz.com/538499/denmark-says-it-isnt-the-socialist-utopia-bernie-sanders-thinks-it-is/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=27&v=MgrJnXZ_WGo
But Danish prime minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, speaking at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government this week, says Sanders got more than a few things wrong.
“I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.”
>>7741785
denmark has shit cancer survival rates m8
200% taxes on cars
Awful place
>>7741793
le edgy contrarian /pol/ is always right meme
>>7741660
>>7741672
>wind turbine breaks down due to outdated design and/or human irresponsibility
>not much happens, some people get to do their jobs when fixing it instead of sitting on their asses all day long
>someone might blog about it
>nuclear power plant breaks down for any reason at all
>global disaster
It'd be better to teach people from childhood up, how to not use gigawatts of energy over their lifetime and still have good quality of life.
>>7741656
>Gas burns clean.
Myth. I do agree it needs to be used more. Not natural gas but bio-methane for sure. There's enough human waste in every place humans live on the planet to meet the needs of complete bio-methane to energy energy generation. Also it is bacteria and yeast that does it not just yeast.
>Uranium mines are very bad. It takes years to build.
You're going to love this one. They can drill wells and use hydrofracking for uranium now. Complete with all the related problems this causes for the environment.
>China
They are at least 50 years behind the USA in energy generation implementation. Let's hope they get past that quickly and get away from coal.
>Solar, Wind, Bio-gas methane, Geothermal
Every build and/or roof top should have some solar panels, passive solar, heat pump, wind turbine, and biogas digestor.
The problem isn't generating energy. The problem is the technology people use and their habits in using energy.
>>7741656
I really really like this meme
India could power itself using poo alone.
>>7741990
>no wind during a long winter night
>no electricity
thanks renewable energies
Wind doesn't work.
There's a maximum amount of kinetic energy that can be taken and converted into electrical energy (about 59%). If you remove 100% of the kinetic energy from wind, the air stops moving. If the air that passes through the turbine stops moving, it doesn't have the kinetic energy necessary to push out of the way the wind that just went through.
Subsequently, there's a minimum spacing required for wind turbines in a given field of turbines to all be able to function.
At minimum spacing, you would need something like 200 Manhattan's worth of turbine fields to power Manhattan's energy needs.
And that's assuming constant supply (which you won't have with wind) or either good batteries for storage (which don't currently exist but someday might) or a dependable, fossil fuel back up (which the defeats your purpose).
And that's to say nothing of the energy costs associated with keeping the turbines moving when there's no wind to prevent the blades from bending; the energy costs of a hydraulic system for keeping the turbines permanently lubricated; or the fact that the wind tends to blow when it's not even needed.
Son, you need to read about shit before you take a position.
>>7741990
>buy "renewable" and "safe" electricity
>every starves and dies because electricity is 100 cents a kwh
thanks liberals
>>7742115
>Wind doesn't work
Yeah that's why governments and companies have invested billions in it, and whole countries depend on it.
>>7742157
Governments often do very wasteful things
Most especially, liberals.
>>7742180
Oh you're American, that explains a lot.
itt btfo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS3CtSX8Eck
>>7742115
>There's a maximum amount of kinetic energy that can be taken and converted into electrical energy (about 59%). If you remove 100% of the kinetic energy from wind, the air stops moving. If the air that passes through the turbine stops moving, it doesn't have the kinetic energy necessary to push out of the way the wind that just went through
Jesus what the hell am I even reading?
The point and extent of green energies would be to supplement our energy, if you believe that people are really talking about going 100% solar you're kidding yourself.
>>7742191
not pictured
ass loads of fossil fuels used to convert ores into used alloys
ass loads of fossil fuels used to convert fossil fuels into plastics
ass loads of fossil fuels used to construct turbine
>>7742191
>7.58 megawatts of power per turbine.
>~650 feet tall
>~400 foot blade span
>35 of these exist and are in operation.
>>7742214
Yet somehow our the pollutant rates and greenhouse gas emmisions are lowering, strange. Somehow net usage of fossile fuels is still lower then what you would have with coal. I'd much rather live near 100 windturbines then a single coal plant.
>inb4 they're and/or parts are manufactured in China
they're not.
>>7742240
Your calculations are wrong. An average nuclear powerplant produces 500 MW. That is 64 of these magnificent turbines.
And when a nuclear meltdown happens, the results will be much more costly. Look at Fukushima and Tsjernobyl, that shit lasts generations. There need only one major accident to happen somewhere in France before fission will even be more rejected.
The reactors themselves were enormously complex machines with an incalculable number of things that could go wrong. When that happened at Three Mile Island in 1979, another fault line in the nuclear world was exposed. One malfunction led to another, and then to a series of others, until the core of the reactor itself began to melt, and even the world's most highly trained nuclear engineers did not know how to respond. The accident revealed serious deficiencies in a system that was meant to protect public health and safety.
>>7742214
All the energy-intensive stages of the nuclear fuel chain are considered, from uranium mining to nuclear decommissioning, nuclear power is not a low-carbon electricity source.
>>7742252
>An average nuclear powerplant produces 500 MW
no its not. most plants are ~3000+ MWt, 1000MWe
the smallest capacity reactor in the US is 480 MWe
>>7742252
>The accident revealed serious deficiencies in a system that was meant to protect public health and safety
but those systems did exactly what they were designed to, with very minimal radioactive contamination and essentially negligible doses to the public. and the the workers didnt know the PORV was stuck open. literally nothing would have happened if the PORV valve was closed within the first 2-5 hours. they were looking at the water level and pressure in the pressuriser, which didnt indicate the PORV valve being stuck open
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJtv7gkuh1s
>Another Fukushima
I don't think you quite understand how limited the Fukushima incident was.
Chernobyl or Kyshtym, sure but Fukushima got hit by an earthquake AND a tsunami and nobody died or likely ever will.
>Muh nuclear boogeyman
>>7741656
wind is garbage.
please dont fall for the wind meme.
Dangers of nuclear energy.....
Look at Finlands new Okiluoto nuclear plant. Even if everything goes wrong, human error, plane crashes into building, it gets bombed or something else, there wont still be any leak. It depends how much money do you invest in safety. Since they started to build it after Fukushima, they built it really safe, maybe even too safe. They built in some mechanical safeguard so that if everything goes wrong there still wont be a disaster and the fuel will go into chambers and wont leak. I mean if you have 3+ or 4th generation nuclear power plants, then the possibility of a disaster is next to none. Also they have new modern simulators, which can predict almost every thing that might go wrong and the weak spots are fixed.
Now, wind is just expensive, and only provides us with 1/3 of time with energy. Our energy demand goes up and it needs to be stable. The only realistic source of energy is nuclear and producing turbines and solar panels are so "green". Huge mines are required and a fuckload of emissions are releasted to build 1 turbine, which lasts 1/3 of nuclear power plants lifetime, gives out so much less energy and only 1/3 of the time. Also the energy is expensive while nuclear is cheap. Get your shit together. Also turbines pollute the environment with noise and vibration. Not to mention that the whole world should be covered with fucking big ugly turbines to satisfy our need.
>>7742090
>Every build and/or roof top should have some solar panels, passive solar, heat pump, wind turbine, and biogas digestor.
Energy redundancy and segregation are key to surviving (i.e. you can still post on 4chan) an outage in one area or another. No sun? There's wind. No wind or sun? There's bio-gas-methane, No wind, sun, or organic matter/feces to process. There's heat pump. No earth? Well fuck, you got me there.
>>7742070
They are actually doing that very thing. They call it "Gobar Gas". They have massive operations as well as small turn key operations like this,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_qOMkeQ3_8
That one mainly runs on cow shit, but you can easily use it for anything else. In many people humane shit is used.
>>7742533
>They built in some mechanical safeguard so that if everything goes wrong there still wont be a disaster and the fuel will go into chambers and wont leak
Just like that boat that couldn't sink, huh?
>>7742115
Actually, anon, you can position the turbines in a special way to reinforce each other and produce MORE energy. You need to use the proper type of HAWT for the configuration.
http://dabirilab.com/
>Manhattan's energy needs.
The biggest mistake is to think people need that much power. They don't. Power is wasted so readily that increasing the cost of Kwh will greatly improve people's conservation of energy. Thus, a place like Manhattan wouldn't need nearly as much energy.
>>7742266
They don't output that much. That is their max output which none actually do.
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=104&t=3
>>7742283
>turbine blade wobblying resonance is the same as electrical resonance
Full Trigger.
>>7742300
How many global disasters have there been when a wind turbine fails in any way?
>>7742533
This really sounds like a lot of wishful thinking really. I'd rather fly a you built while drunk than trust nuclear power plants to not have quite disastrous problems.
>>7742624
I´m not a expert on the matter, but i study thermal power engineering and i have had some insight on what they have done, which i unfortunately have mostly forgotten. Anyways it will be safest ever built, but of course it cant be 100% safe. There is always a possibility of a disaster, what i am saying is that the possibility of a disaster is so minimal, and the benefits so great, that it is just so much better. Also nuclear is more "green" than wind turbines. I´m not trying to promote nuclear blindly, but as i have studied all the possible ways to get electricity, there is no better way. People have said for 2 decades, that solar and wind are going to conquer the world, but there are just too many problems. I live in a place, where the wind blows at average 5 m/s, which is not cost efficient for wind turbines and the sun shines only for a brief time in the winter. I would like to be in a warm room and not sit in the dark and home that the wind starts to blow again so that my lamp can shine again.
>>7742645
yes they do. theyre more often operating at 90-100% power than they are at 50-70% or some lesser number. and most can operate as high as 112% design basis power level
>>7742693
>theyre more often operating at 90-100% power
>most can operate as high as 112% design basis power level
>>7742693
> As of December 1, 2015, there were 99 operating nuclear reactors at 61 nuclear power plants in the United States. The Fort Calhoun plant in Nebraska has one reactor with the smallest generating capacity1 of 479 megawatts (MW). The Palo Verde plant in Arizona has three reactors and has the largest combined generating capacity1 of about 3,937 MW.
>The amount of electricity that a nuclear reactor or power plant generates depends on the amount of time it operates at a specific capacity. For example, if the Fort Calhoun reactor operates at 479 MW capacity for 24 hours, it will generate 11,496 megawatthours (MWh). Most power plants do not operate a full capacity every hour of every day of the year.
>>7742744
>>7742751
i can read, and your greentexting word for word some shit that doesnt even help your argument is pretty useless.
Wind and solar are way too expensive. You have to use coal to make up the difference in energy loss with wind and solar. Current generation of fission reactors are very safe. You will die more from solar panels than nuclear. Nuclear has killed less people than any other form of energy. wind and solar have killed more people than nuclear. China is proliferating fission plants through their country and India is following in those footsteps. China is even exporting their advanced reactors to other countries. Britain is going to build three of these plants with the help of the Chinese government. Both India and China are importing less oil but more gas. This is a hint that both countries are trying to use CNG/LNG for their transportation economy. China and India have large deposits of thorium and uranium. THis makes it cheaper than wind and solar. Due to their sheer population size this will start a nuclear race with the west. Germany is in talks to bring back nuclear due to the failure of wind/solar.
>>7741990
>nuclear power plant breaks down for any reason at all
>global disaster
this is total sophistry. a responsibly designed nuclear power plant will never cause a global disaster if it breaks down.
If you believe the fear memes around nuclear energy, the Fukushima-Diachi plant (A nuclear power plant, years past its use-by date, hit by both a 9.0 earthquake and a 40m tsunami in the same day) should've been an uncontrollable catastrophe.
Look at what actually happened: the casualties. 0 deaths. 0 radiation sickness. No damage to children or members of the public. 2 beta radiation burn victims who were discharged from hospital after 2 days. 2 workers who inhaled iodine-131, giving them a risk of developing thyroid cancer (one of the most easily treatable forms of cancer). Yet for some reason, people cling to the meme that 'nucular power bad!' and actively work to silence the scientists who prove otherwise.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/canadian-researcher-targeted-by-hate-campaign-over-fukushima-findings/article27060613/
you fuckers think you can just throw solar panels and turbines on green pastures and think everything will be fine and dandy.
Fuck you and your shit memes.
Its called energy storage. Ever heard of it?
Batteries are the key to getting your solar and wind memes accepted by the economy. If we had batteries/fuel cells that were cost efficient, then petroleum would be dead.
>inb4 but muh based god Elon is making Lithium batteries in a shit factory
>>7742825
>petroleum is dead
>we just need to accept WORSE pollution and paying 10 times the price :^)
progress in action
>>7742824
Blame Greenpeace for anti-nuclear propaganda. They're secretly funded by oil and gas companies.
imo, what should be done is this:
instead of wasting so much electricity and energy in general, industries and people should use solar heaters, and, in some places, forced to do so.
for example, constructions are actually required to have solar water heaters in israel (inb4 jew):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Israel#Solar_water_heaters
some industries are really heavy in terms of energy use. why aren't they forced to use a portion of solar energy (concentrated solar for their materials, solar water heaters for other things) for their processes? why aren't these industries moved to places with high solar radiation?
Solar energy is a synthetic dessert Machine that kills everything in its radius until the land is a salt flat, and wind power is a wildlife macerated that could make many animals extinct in 50 years if it had its way. No thanks
Liquid thorium reactors are the future mang.
>>7742824
>a responsibly designed
Stopped reading there.
All nuclear power plants have been "responsibly designed". It is only after they fail that someone jumps on a bandwagon to vilify them. The point is, no one knows what will happen, ever. You can't plan for everything. You can't get your contractors to build anything the way it was written on paper, and you certainly can't guarantee anything to be 100% safe in anyway shape or form.
Thinking otherwise shows complete, irresponsible, naive ignorance.
You have only 1. ONE power plant that fucked up badly and didn't harm tons of people. Most people here can only name 3 nuclear power plants that have had problems and probably remember more movies where they blew up than anything else. So, they moan on and on about how safe they are.
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/mar/14/nuclear-power-plant-accidents-list-rank
http://www.wind-works.org/cms/index.php?id=43&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=414&cHash=5a7a0eb3236dd3283a3b6d8cf4cc508b
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents
Look at this graph. Oh boy you say, I've got him now! Then remember that most deaths for wind and solar are installation hazards of people falling not from it failing.
>>7742909
I bet you'd wet yourself if you knew how many birds those big glass windows in sky scrapers kill every year.
>>7742879
Why?
Because people in charge just don't give a shit until enough people make them give a shit. Money is a massive motivator, but so is laziness. People don't want to change an established system they see as working fine for one that may or may not work in their own opinion. That is what you fight against.
>>7742962
>Solar .44
What the fuck, did someone slip and break their neck on a panel or something?
>>7741656
Nuclear is expensive as fuck.
This is what /sci/tards don't get, no matter how much you try explaining it to them. It is all about economics. Who the fuck wants to take out an insurance policy and wait 10 years before making back their money. Nuclear is never going to be the future.
>>7741660
this desu
>>7742974
I wish I had money or power to do that. the reality is that those who do care more about playing with profitable toys (>muh reusable rockets, >muh electric cars/batteries) rather than worrying about real problems/solutions
>>7742983
Yes, that is EXACTLY what is happening and why the numbers are so high for solar. Falling off of roofs during installation.
>>7742983
Yes, or panels falling on people.
>>7742990
Its as expensive as gas, oil, and coal. Every fucking energy source is a net negative without subsidizes. Energy was never meant to be a profit resource. Its just too expensive to refine and use. By the way solar plants are extremely expensive more than nuclear.
>>7743033
Look at the cost per watt for Nuclear and average return on investment and initial costs. It is fucking atrocious, private companies are never going to give us a nuclear future. Nobody wants to pump so much money into a project that won't start making returns before 10 years and is subject to flimsy political whims. Not to mention you have to take out a stupid expensive insurance policy. It is nowhere near comparable to coal, oil, or natural gas. Don't kid yourself.
Renewable are a much safer and easier bet, allowing for much smaller investors to participate as well as consumers. There will be little political opposition, and very predictable return on investment. Renewable is capitalist-friendly. That is why it is going to win. Easy to compete, easy to invest, political stability, and predictable returns.
>>7743068
You do understand that nuclear is very easy to map their lifetime cost? Its nearly impossible with oil, gas, and coal. All three require a lot of government backing to make them profitable. Also the cost per watt for nuclear is the lowest. ROI takes a long time for a vast majority of energy resources. Gas is the only exception. Private companies do maintain nuclear plants. GE is the biggest owner. Its pretty obvious you have no idea what you're talking about.
>>7743033
>Its as expensive as gas, oil, and coal. Every fucking energy source is a net negative without subsidizes. Energy was never meant to be a profit resource. Its just too expensive to refine and use. By the way solar plants are extremely expensive more than nuclear.
Running costs in this image.
Source for it,
https://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/assumptions/pdf/table_8.2.pdf
Nuclear:
>between $6 billion and $9 billion for each 1,100MW plant.
http://www.psr.org/nuclear-bailout/resources/nuclear-power-plant.pdf
Solar:
>MPower to Build $14 Million Solar Power Station
http://energystoragealliance.com.au/mpower-build-14-million-solar-power-station/
>Japan Asia Building $33 Million Solar Plant in Joint Venture
http://about.bnef.com/bnef-news/japan-asia-building-33-million-solar-plant-in-joint-venture/
Wind:
>MidAmerican gets OK to build $900 million wind project
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/business/2015/08/21/midamerican-gets-ok-build-900-million-wind-project/32143545/
>Indonesia's Largest Wind Farm Project Seeks Up to $135 Million
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2015/10/indonesia-s-largest-wind-farm-project-seeks-up-to-135-million.html
>>7743068
I support nuclear power because I want more money pumped into fusion research. Fission is problematic as fuck.
>>7743068
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Economic-Aspects/Economics-of-Nuclear-Power/
>>7743078
Look at the output(MW). Every other source is more expensive if you try to match the same output. You need to spent at least twenty times for solar as you do for one NPP.
>>7743070
Initial investment is massive, well in the BILLIONS.
Then comes insurance, another several hundred million.
Now you wait 10 years for all the clearances and construction to finish.
Then you start making money back.
Oops, now cost per watt has dropped thanks to cheaper advanced natural gas cycles. There goes your money.
Oops, someone else in the country fucked up and now all nuclear reactors in the nation must be shut down (Japan).
Oops, new Greentard parties came into power, now you have to shut down your planets (Germany, Italy, etc.).
If nuclear was so great private companies would have invested into it a looooong time ago, and we would be living in the nuclear age by now. It has nothing to do with mere technology unless we are talking about a nuclear fusion breakthrough, it is about cost-risk investment. Politics and business, not just science.
Look at all those Japanese companies that invested into Nuclear. Their bottom lines all got ravaged by Fukishima. Look at French Areva, they are currently going through massive layoffs and restructuring because Nuclear is not nearly as viable as they think. Plus France is dragged into a bunch of stupid conflicts in shitholes like Mali and Nigerto keep their Uranium supply coming in.
Conventional Nuclear is NEVER going to compete with the capitalist, consumer, politician, and investor friendly Renewables. Every 'problem' with renewables is just more money to be made by clever investors and entrepreneurs. Renewables are the ultra capitalist free-market dream that investors masturbate to.
>>7743107
You do understand that you just stated that the regulation is the problem. The initial investment is huge due to the regulatory body. Something that doesn't exist for other conventional energy sources. The NRC in the US is credited for making nuclear power expensive. That body was created in response to the coal industry lobbying congress after they were losing billions to the rise of nuclear power in the 70s. So the problem isn't nuclear its the government. Also most industries dont' want a nuclear dominated market. Its an economic war rather than being capitalist. Also don't preach free market. Not even the "free marketer" themselves like it. You lose to a better competitor. Laws are passed to prevent this from occurring.
>>7743149
>Oops, now cost per watt has dropped thanks to cheaper advanced natural gas cycles. There goes your money.
>Oops, someone else in the country fucked up and now all nuclear reactors in the nation must be shut down (Japan).
>Oops, new Greentard parties came into power, now you have to shut down your planets (Germany, Italy, etc.).
>>7743168
Japan didnt abandoned nuclear power. They're staying on course with it. Advanced natural gas cycles is needed for transportation. Not electricity. Even though both nuke and gas create about the same rate of electricity supply. Fossil fuels do beat nuclear power if its cheap, which is becoming harder as climate change and market fluctuation increase the price of fossil fuels. Tar sand oil is too expensive and fracking for gas is creating a disaster for the federal government. Greentard parties have increased the price of electricity in Germany, Italy, and Denmark. The greens promised to build solar and wind plants but they were too expensive and had to build coal plants to meet their electricity demand. Since 2013 their CO2 emission rates have increased because of this. Which has led to talks of reviving nuclear power in those countries. Germany has a direct pipeline with Russia to feed them gas. But that price is increasing because of the sanctions.
Hundred years from now we will look at Windmill/turbines and see them as we see Zeppelins / Airships now as we look back in the 1920's.
So in 100 years from now some comfy anon wll say
>tfw now retrofuture windturbine to charge my A.I waifu
>>7742770
We all know China and we all know that their industrial facilities like to blow up. Nuclear reactors and uranium mines are going to fuck up their environment even more. They'll dig mines everywhere and sooner or later they're going to experience am eltdown. My guess is that by 2100 china will be a radioactive, polluted wasteland while Europe will still be livable and the center of progress and life quality, just like it is today.
The nuclear power we use now is completely ass backwards. Uranium is less common than gold, and is full of very serious risks. Thorium is the most viable form of harvesting nuclear energy. It's very safe, very efficient and abundant. It's our best option for supplying people with power down the road. Like it or not green power will
Never come close
As of December 2014, installed capacity of wind power in the European Union totaled 128,751 megawatts (MW). The EU wind industry has had a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10% between the years 2000 and 2013. In 2014, a total of 11,791 MW of wind power was installed, representing 32% of all new power capacity.
The European Wind Energy Association estimates that 230 gigawatts (GW) of wind capacity will be installed in Europe by 2020, consisting of 190 GW onshore and 40 GW offshore. This would produce 14-17% of the EU's electricity, avoiding 333 million tonnes of CO2 per year and saving Europe €28 billion a year in avoided fuel costs.
Sources:
http://www.ewea.org/fileadmin/files/library/publications/statistics/EWEA_Annual_Statistics_2013.pdf
http://www.ewea.org/fileadmin/swf/factsheet/1_statisticsandtargets.pdf
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/large-majorities-in-us-and-five-largest-european-countries-favor-more-wind-farms-and-subsidies-for-bio-fuels-but-opinion-is-split-on-nuclear-power-104844169.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_European_Union
>>7743315
Only a few MSRs have actually been built. Those experimental reactors were constructed more than 40 years ago. This leads some technologists[who?] to say that it is difficult to critically assess the concept. It would take decades of nuclear funding to create the nessescary experiments, infrastructure and facilities, the costs would literally rise into the billions.
There are still tons of theoretical problems to be solved also. Unlike mined uranium, mined thorium does not have a fissile isotope. Thorium reactors breed fissile uranium-233 from thorium, but require a considerable amount of U-233 for initial start up. There is very little of this material available. This raises the problem of how to start the reactors in a reasonable time frame.
Today's solid fuelled reactor vendors make long term revenues by fuel fabrication.[dubious – discuss] Without any fuel to fabricate and sell, a LFTR would adopt a different business model. There would be significant barrier to entry costs to make this a viable business. Existing infrastructure and parts suppliers are geared towards water-cooled reactors. There is little thorium market and thorium mining, so considerable infrastructure that would be required does not yet exist. Regulatory agencies have less experience regulating thorium reactors, creating potentials for extended delays.
If the fluoride fuel salts are stored in solid form over many decades, radiation can cause the release of corrosive fluorine gas and uranium hexafluoride. The salts must be defueled and wastes removed before extended shutdowns and stored above 100 degrees Celsius. Fluorides are less suitable for long term storage because some have high water solubility unless vitrified in insoluble borosilicate glass.
So if you compare the total costs and time needed to make this a viable option, windmills and cheap and easy. Europe is doing it right - >>7743316
Did you now that 36 Vestas V90 3MW turbines are enough to power 100.000 Dutch houses ?
Only 39 of those flimsy turbines, incredible!
As some one who has taken part in the construction of wind farms I feel the majority of people don't get just how invasive and destructive they are to construct. You made some great points but I don't think there is anyone solution to the problem, although if people would stop wasting and start conserving in little ways through out they day it would
Be the best immediate fix hands down.
>>7743349
>invasive and destructive they are to construct.
Windturbines aren't mean to be non-invasive or non-destructuve. They are just meant to be less-invasive and less-destructive then coal and nuclear powerplants. Are they ? In my opinion, yes.
>>7743354
>nuclear powerplants
>invasive
>>7743361
Not just nuclear powerplants but uranium mines also. Fission plants are ticking time bombs I wouldn't my country to depend on them. Too expensive, too risky, too many changes in politics and ecomomics, not worth the investment, not worth it at all.
>>7743364
>Fission plants are ticking time bombs
lrn into security
>Too expensive
cheaper by unit of power than solar or wind
>too risky
counting deaths by unit of power produced, nuclear is actually safer than solar and wind
>too many changes in politics and ecomomics
yeah, prosperity would be so fucking bad
>>7743367
>union of concerned scientists
yeah, that doesnt sound biased at all, look, they even have a .org domain and everything!
>>7743375
>haha look at how smart and arrogant i am i just shoved away a ton of academic scientists because of their name ebin!! :DD
die in a pit
i live in the suburbs, not a big city. they could put these up along the hills near where i am and i'm sure the cattle would cope fine. is your only argument the fact that you don't like the look of them? i fuckin hate the big orange/brown cloud that i can see on the landscape when i look towards all the industrial areas around the place but we need that shit there. i don't care what the building look like, if they could produce their products without creating shit house dirty air for kilometers around them i'd be right on board. i don't give a fuck what it looks like as long as it's a cleaner solution. flying over NSW, in one area it's a nice beautiful green colour, with little insignificant white dotted lines that are the so called "ugly" wind turbines, then you look a few kilometers to the side and there's a massive area that's all brown dirt, and full of mines, which looks fucking disgusting compared to the lovely green fields with shiney white poles on em, yet no cunt cries about that. seriously, mate, if your only problem is what they look like, you're no better than the "city people" that you seem to think i am. as for the noise, try living near a highway or in a city where the sound is erratic and constantly changing volume. we can't all come and live in the country, you'd have an even worse landscape if we did
>>7742615
>segregation
What exactly do you mean by that?
>heat pump
can only be used for heating. Where I live most people use oil or gas, so the impact of heating on the electricity demand can be ignored.
>bio-gas
so you're trying to tell me that we have to keep thousands of bio-gas power plants on stand-by for long winter nights without wind? That's beyond affordable.
I have yet to see a viable plan with renewable energies that ensures continous electricity supply.
>>7743381
maybe find a source that was not written by hippies?
>>7742962
>Then remember that most deaths for wind and solar are installation hazards of people falling not from it failing.
Because this isn't fucking relevant for wing which HAS to be high up?
Or solar which will be going up on roofs?
They wouldn't be up there if the government didn't decide to burn billions of dollars in this renewable meme
>>7743315
Uranium is common as hell, what are you talking about
It's 100 dollars a kg
>>7743511
here in the Netherlands I pay 0.20 euro / kWh
(0.22$)
If I look at the stats in the USA
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_6_a
It seems to me the average electricity price in the US is 0,15$.
So we pay about 6 cents more. Lets say you use 2500 kWh a year. That means a Dutch person pays about 150 $ a year more on electricity then an average American.
Yet your health insurance costs like 10x more, and we have higher wages and lower work weeks. Fact is that the average life quality is better here then the average american life quality, if you look at the stats and the rankings.
I happily pay a few hundred bucks extra a year for cleaner air and energy and less dependency on Russian fossils
>>7743569
7* cents
>>7743569
>blue states pay twice as much as red states
They do dumb "green" stuff too.
I don't see what relationship "green" energy has on health care or HDI
>>7743511
Energy costs are WAY too fucking cheap.
Cost per kilowatt hour should be around $3USD. That should be the target goal. Why? Because people will stop wasting so much energy through habit and companies will design technology that will be extremely energy efficient.
I only pay $0.10USD per kWh. My electric bill is on average $35USD. I can't even go green power DIY because it'd take about 10 years to pay off the initial cost for energy storage, but even more than that due to parts needing replaced. Every single person I know has an electric bill around $150 to $200 a month and they are using gas heating for home and water, not electric.
If electric was $3/kWh, at my current usage, I'd be paying on order of $1,050USD. At which point I wouldn't bat an eye making my own DIY power because it'd be worth it. I'd also be using even more energy efficient electronics. My neighbors would be paying $6,000USD a month. BAM! Green energy revolution. The power grid would be segregated up into DIY household power. No more giant power companies for most people. No power outages on large scales from weather or terrorism.
>>7743591
>I don't see what relationship "green" energy has on health care or HDI
I live in a coal power plant area. There's like 5 plants within 200 miles of this location and all are, "upwind." Many of the elementary children here have inhalers.
>>7743569
>I happily pay a few hundred bucks extra a year for cleaner air and energy and less dependency on Russian fossils
I'd happily pay 95% of my income if it meant no more children has respiratory problems due to coal power plants.
>>7743640
Communist detected. Don't you have murder and censorship to do?
>>7741656
Yes, let's base our electricity infrastrure on fluctuating "clean" ( go ask the chinese if they're clean ) energy.
AND THE LET'S BUILD HUGE POLLUTING COAL PLANTS BECAUSE YOU STILL NEED SOME BASELOAD WHEN YOUR "CLEAN" SHIT DON'T DELIVER
GO NUCLEAR FISSION OF GO HOME
F I S S I O N
I
S
S
I
O
N
>>7743644
Apply yourself.
>>7743645
Investing everything into 1 thing is asking for disaster.
>>7743642
Coal has always been shit and should have been replaced decades ago
The point is, without marxists and lobbyists in washington, anti-nuclear regulatory bodies wouldn't exist, and we would all have clean safe nuclear power.
>>7743656
Invest into LFTR and fusion then.
Personally i don't care, uranium all the way baby.
>>7743645
The baseload is provided by bio(gas).
>>7743736
I meant (bio)gas
>>7742191
linked to that video in youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW1bQziKVUQ
>>7742300
that's because they dumped the radiactive materials to the ocean...
>>7743316
Can someone explain to me what the downsides are here?
Seems like Renewables won, and Coal/Nuclear lost.
>>7743657
:clean safe nuclear power
No such thing
Tbh I´d rather have a combination of nuclear, wind, solar and hydro. But the economy behind coal is very strong, and many important peeps do not want to see it go.
>>7743839
Natural gas is cheaper than Coal, at least here in America.
Coal is going to die one way or another. It just can't compete from an economic standpoint without some major subsidies.
>>7743657
>Coal has always been shit and should have been replaced decades ago
Agreed.
>The point is, without marxists and lobbyists in washington, anti-nuclear regulatory bodies wouldn't exist, and we would all have clean safe nuclear power.
That's not how it works. Lobbyists for sure, but those lobbyists are coal company and oil/gas companies. It is just corporate greed, plain and simple.
>>7743799
GB2/b/ for being triggered so hard and having 0 rebuttal.
>>7743818
>Can someone explain to me what the downsides are here?
Um..... well......
Ah! It isn't like this in the USA. That's the downside. There's too much anti-renewable propaganda still.
>>7743859
coal can compete fine
Except for overregulated "clean coal"
It's just dirty as fucking hell.
>>7742180
Why is everything bad the liberals' fault?
>>7741656
Look up energy return on investment, I'm not saying solar and wind are a scam, just that they're actually a lot less efficient and cost-effective when you factor in how much energy goes into making and assembling things like turbines and solar cells. Also energy density is still kinda low compared to traditional sources.
>>7741656
Alternate energy is just meant to cap what the fossil fuel producing nations can charge the West.
>Oh you are going to rape us? Well watch this, we will rape ourselves and you wont get a cent.
I'm glad that I live in the EU and that we have we are the creme de la creme when it comes ot environmental regulation. It's the only way to make life bearable. Clean air, shelter, food and water are the most basic nessecities. If a country cannot provide any one of them it's not a first world country. I like that owning a car is more expensive here because it keeps people from riding shit boxes and stimulate using public transport more. With wind, solar, gas, electric / gas cars, the future looks bright.
>>7744919
>international jew parasite says nationalism is a disease
what else is new
>>7743506
Plus when we get bored of mining the shit out of the earth, there are a comfy 4 *10^12 kg of uranium in the oceans.
>>7744919
>nationalism is a disease
>says a prominent supporter for a Jewish zionist state
>>7744906
>Because thats just how things are
Thanks for the explanation fagtron you sure convinced me.
>>7745114
Liberals are the sorta person who think they know everything, better than anyone else
When in reality they are clueless delusional idiots
Most of the really bad policies in the west come from liberals.
>>7745314
Maybe you need to see the world from their pov once. Because both are equally as retarded. There's only one thing that can save humanity and that is technology or rationality and common sense but since the latter is greatly in absence I put my bets on technology.
>>7745345
>Maybe you need to see the world from their pov once.
I'm not a delusional narcissist so I probably never will.
Problem with PVs is that while you could get almost 50 percents of Eff (or eta), from multi junction PV, it's not economically viable.
90 percent of PV panels that is being manufactured is a pn-junction solar cell(which use c-Si and has practical Eff of around 20%). This makes them ill suited for main energy generation of a country. At 1MW/hectare, solar farm also are quite land-intensive and are usually built in arid or unproductive land (former landfill for example)
As much as I like PV (I did research on them during my undergraduate days), At most, they are useful as a cheap way to provide electricity to rural area (because connecting them to regional/national electricity grid is expensive), or reducing a building electrical demand during peak hours.
I don't see them contributing significantly for domestic and industrial use
>>7741656
The only solution is that the modern world has to go. We can't replace 20 terawatts with renewables on any earthly GDP.
The only choice is a 90% reduction in power use in the western world, and 0% growth forever after that.
Forget Politics, we're talking about an end to christmas and materialism. There is no bringing about that change, humans are too selfish.
>>7745348
Oh yeah you don't sound supercillious at all.
AT ALL.
Alternative energy sources are far from replacing fossil fuels as main energy sources. Wind energy is very dependent on location, and requires quite a lot of land to build it around. Also they're loud as hell and far from reliable, and you need a fuckton of maintenance to keep them running smoothly. Solar panels are expensive and unwieldy. The ones people usually stick on the roof is for heating because the electric ones are in short supply, expensive as fuck and aren't efficient enough to run an entire household. You're going to need quite a lot of them to power a city, and sticking them on every available surface won't actually help much. It will help, though. They are far from easy to make, and require rare earth materials in large amounts which takes a lot of strip mining. Dependent on weather conditions, not even climate. Impossible to store.
Biofuel from waste is very, very inefficient and hazardous to health. Fuel from corn competes with food.
Also, realistically more people have been negatively affected and killed by fossil fuel energy production than nuclear incidents. Chernobyl has more stigma than anything else, and Fukushima didn't even melt down. The actual minimum safe amounts of radiation is up to 8 times less than the actual safe limit is. 2 isolated incidents in 50 years is somehow worse than literal hundreds of incidents in fossil fueled generators in the same time frame? Grow up.
>>7745385
Nuclear isn't an option. Even if other sources replaced half the grid, we'd still have to pay $15 trillion annually just for the non-fuel O&M.
This sums it up.
Biomass powerplant is quite underrated. They could do with pretty much any organic materials;from fruit peels to twigs and branches from decorative trees in streets
>>7745388
I wouldn't say to discount nuclear energy completely, though. Despite the risks, a little uranium goes quite a long way, and it is way more efficient than oil based energy production, something few others can say. But as for replacing completely? Not yet. But soon.
>>7744906
>It's not just lobbyists, it's groups like CFR or other globalists who, for whatever reason, turned anti-nuclear decades ago.
But, those ARE lobbyists.
>>7745314
>Liberals are the sorta person who think they know everything, better than anyone else
>When in reality they are clueless delusional idiots
So, basically most of 4chan and most of humanity.
Do you even know the definition of the terms you are using?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
>>7745436
This has nothing to do with risks. The cost of operating the plants will be $15 trillion at the least.
>>7743325
>Thorium reactors breed fissile uranium-233 from thorium, but require a considerable amount of U-233 for initial start up. This is why engineers were stuck with using U-233. But as you said, there is very little of this material available, so the costs of building a thorium based reactor isn't any cheaper than the alternative.
The reason for this is due to Thorium not having any fissile isotopes.
That's a huge barrier for starting up any thorium (or MSR) reactor.
Do you know what is wrong with this fucking world? It is shit like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy#Debate
Take a look at the page. There is such a retarded backlash/propaganda against non-coal/oil energies that this wikipage has to have shit like this image on it. Which is nothing but a fucking clickbait image/poll.
I mean look at this shit. People are black and white on the issue. They can't have both, nooooo, that won't do. I can fully understand and appreciate NIMBY. I live between 2 massive Marcellus Shale gas wells that completely destroyed everything here. I'd rather have mega wind turbines on either side of me. At least I'd get better sleep at night and not have the stench from the sludge pits in the air 24/7.
But people are still like "no we can't use this type of renewable energy because it is intermittent" even if that problem has been fixed over a decade ago.
>>7745460
None of those are solutions.
The only solution is to reduce energy use in the western world by 90%. It would mean an end to commercialism. An end to christmas.
This has nothing to do with politics. People are inherently too selfish to make the necessary sacrifices. We wait for the god of technology to save us from the consequences of our overspending.
Humanity is the guy who wins a million dollars in the lottery and is homeless a year later.
>>7745467
Forgot pic during my kekking.
>>7745385
>Solar panels are expensive and unwieldy.
....they are considerably cheaper than the ones produced 30 years ago. And they are extremely efficient. There are numerous solar farms on this planet that produces enough energy to power their respective metropolitan areas.
>Fuel from corn competes with food
This is a true statement. I have always viewed this has a genuine government subsidy that should have been eliminated years ago (now I know why Reagan vetoed the Farm Aid bill....)
>>7745469
What is that meant to demonstrate? That if we covered the entire surface of the earth in solar panels we could produce enough energy to boil the oceans assuming resources and time were infinite?
What else? Methane generation from perfectly spherical cows?
>>7745472
>....they are considerably cheaper than the ones produced 30 years ago. And they are extremely efficient. There are numerous solar farms on this planet that produces enough energy to power their respective metropolitan areas.
So what? they are still limited by thermodynamics and their production releases a bunch of co2 and other greenhouse gasses. We can live on solar alone, if we reduce our energy use by 90%.
Nobody is ever going to do that though, not without a fight.
>>7745385
>Biofuel from waste is very, very inefficient and hazardous to health. Fuel from corn competes with food.
You sir are very ignorant of how things work. The existence of subsidized corn itself is a massive threat to the world food system. Companies and governments use it as a weapon against other countries they want to destabilize. This happened in Africa and Mexico. They flood in tons of ultra cheap corn for a few generations and all the farmers lose their jobs and no one farms anymore. Then they cut the supply off and everything turns to utter shit in a heartbeat.
The biggest problem is that America is doing this very thing to itself. It should never have picked up corn the way it did. It needs to diversify ASAP.
Also, the only good biofuel is biogas methane made from animal and human wastes. It is the most efficient way to turn biomass into usable energy. This is because the microbes do 90% of the work for you. Its production leaves you with 2 things, high-nitrogen fertilizer and biogas methane. Both of which are extremely important and highly usable.
>>7745468
I agree with you totally, but that isn't going to happen as you know. So the next best thing is to use only renewables.
>>7745478
>So what? they are still limited by thermodynamics and their production releases a bunch of co2 and other greenhouse gasses. We can live on solar alone, if we reduce our energy use by 90%.
Creative problem solving is what allowed for solar panels to be produced more efficiently, and at a reduced cost (adjusted for inflation) versus 30 years ago.
>Nobody is ever going to do that though, not without a fight.
Agreed.
>>7745489
>
Creative problem solving is what allowed for solar panels to be produced more efficiently, and at a reduced cost (adjusted for inflation) versus 30 years ago.
Is it your contention that creative problem solving can break the laws of thermodynamics?
>>7742191
why don't they just make a GINORMOUS vertical axis wind turbine and float it on mercury like telescope observatory domes
>>7745498
Because the residents would veto it. That's democracy for you.
>>7745490
>Is it your contention that creative problem solving can break the laws of thermodynamics?
No. Finding alternative materials is what I'm suggesting in the aforementioned comment.
I will agree there is only so much power that can be generated by one single solar panel.
And since we're talking about possible solutions, it's feasible we could build such an array in low Earth Orbit. It would be massive....and take years to build.
>Now if we could only find the financing for such a colossal undertaking
>>7745504
There are no alternative materials.
Orbital solar is only 20% better than surface solar.
We can maybe get costs down by a factor of two before hitting hard thermodynamic limits.
It's over.
>>7745472
"Cheaper" doesn't mean cheap. They still cost a lot of money, and need to be maintained.
>>7745468
Lets reduce energy usage and stop technological process in order to save ''muh organisms''. ? Dont you understand that the amount of energy we use is parallel to our advancement ? The higher our energy use the higher our advancement. Polluting this earth to hell is nessescary for our long term survival, since it will force us to colonize other planets. Otherwise we'll be stuck here and be doomed and our species would go extinct. If we would stop using fossils our economy would collapse and civillization also. Coal is the fucking reason that he have advanced so far. We build our nations upon it. Without coal we would never
>>7745515
>There are no alternative materials.
At the moment, that is true. Wasn't true 30 years ago. But there could be better alternative methods of pulling power from the cells......
>Orbital solar is only 20% better than surface solar.
If the orbital station was scaled up, that 20% would be adequate for generating enough power. Again, it would have to be a huge array.
>We can maybe get costs down by a factor of two before hitting hard thermodynamic limits.
>It's over.
Not necessarily, such arrays could be used to kickstart other alternative power systems.
One engineer working on the ITER suggested using an orbital solar platform to kickstart the fusion process inside a fusion reactor.....
>>7745521
I'm sorry, are you quoting science fiction as if it were reality?
Well let me do the same:
>Many throughout history were unaware of this most basic fact. The Qu, in dreams of an ideal future, distorted the worlds they came across. Later on the Gravital, with their insane desire to recreate the past, caused the ugliest massacres in the history of the galaxy. Even now, it is sickeningly easy for beings to get lost in false grand narratives, living out completely driven lives in pursuit of non-existent codes, ideals, climaxes and golden ages. In blindly thinking that their stories serve absolute ends, such creatures almost always end up harming themselves, if not those around them.
>>7745519
The cost of maintaining solar cells is proportional to the advancement in the manufacturing process.
Solar cells (while still expensive today) aren't nearly as cost intensive as it was years before...
>>7745524
>At the moment, that is true. Wasn't true 30 years ago. But there could be better alternative methods of pulling power from the cells......
What a convenient plan that cannot be falsified. I guess we shouldn't worry about running out of oil either with that logic?
>If the orbital station was scaled up, that 20% would be adequate for generating enough power. Again, it would have to be a huge array.
Yes, over 30,000 miles across. Forgive me for my skepticism.
>One engineer working on the ITER suggested using an orbital solar platform to kickstart the fusion process inside a fusion reactor.....
You shouldn't trust con artists. Fusion is nothing more than the most expensive means of heating water that we've ever conceived of.
>>7745529
But there's a physical limit to how cheap you can make any manufacturing process, and we can get at most a factor of two out of it since it's already 40% efficient.
>>7745480
And you sir do not understand what efficiency is. Energy is spent producing the corn. Energy is spent shipping the waste and fuel to and from it's destinations. There's a lot of health risks when using waste in anything. No matter how you slice it, there's too much cost and not enough actual fuel production for it to be viable.
>>7745537
Even the USA's energy advisor doesn't understand efficiency. it's a magic bullet for them.
>>7745534
>What a convenient plan that cannot be falsified. I guess we shouldn't worry about running out of oil either with that logic?
I'm talking about pulling more current out of the individual cells themselves.
As for running out of oil, I have never subscribed to the peak oil theory.
How can you prove or disprove something without perfect information? Do we really know how much oil is left underneath the sands in Saudi Arabia? Iran? The marshes of southern Nigeria? Do you fully trust what the OPEC cartel tells you when it comes to supply? I could go on...but I don't want to get totally sidetracked.
>Yes, over 30,000 miles across. Forgive me for my skepticism.
Forgiven, but such a device doesn't need to be that prohibitively large. I was thinking more inline of 30 km wide. Come to think of it...that too is massively large...
>You shouldn't trust con artists. Fusion is nothing more than the most expensive means of heating water that we've ever conceived of.
...of which could produce steam...turning turbine blades.....etc etc.
Don't discount fusion power. We may be years away from building a feasible reactor, but it's not a scam.
OPEC...on the other hand.........
>>7745536
>and we can get at most a factor of two out of it since it's already 40% efficient.
I don't know what sort of economies of scales are needed to achieve cheaper manufacturing processes in regards to assembling solar cells.
It's very possible we may have already hit our peak efficiency in building solar panels.
>>7745545
>As for running out of oil, I have never subscribed to the peak oil theory.
Thank you for finally admitting that you do not believe in limits. Now i no longer have to address your contentions. Everything you say and believe in is based on flawed axioms.
Remedy that.
>>7745548
>It's very possible we may have already hit our peak efficiency in building solar panels.
I would agree with that. It's well within reason to assume as such.
We've only got so many christmases left. Enjoy it while it lasts.
>>7745549
oil comes from abiotic sources m8
theres a million years of it availible
you just have to drill deeper & deeper
>>7745549
>Thank you for finally admitting that you do not believe in limits. Now i no longer have to address your contentions. Everything you say and believe in is based on flawed axioms.
Unless you know just how much oil is left underneath the ground in key oil producing nations, you will never be able to definitively say that we are running out of oil.
>Remedy that.
I did. Years ago, after realizing Dick Cheney's and Kenneth Lay's Enron flavored "Kool-Aid" netted me a tremendous loss, thanks in large part to the "muh oil reserves are being depleted" scheme.
>>7745553
So if it costs 20 million dollars to recover 10 million dollars in oil people will just take the 10 million dollar loss because they're nice?
You don't seem to understand how economies work. Again, because your axioms are flawed.
>>7745521
>Lets reduce energy usage and stop technological process in order to save ''muh organisms''.
That isn't what he said.
>Dont you understand that the amount of energy we use is parallel to our advancement ?
> The higher our energy use the higher our advancement.
Correlation is not causation.
> Polluting this earth to hell is nessescary for our long term survival, since it will force us to colonize other planets.
Horrifically terrible logic. The only driving force for space colonization won't be because we are shitting this place up, it will be for profit. As in to bring back more materials to shit up the Earth with.
>Otherwise we'll be stuck here and be doomed and our species would go extinct
This is going to happen. Have no delusions. Just don't ever stop fighting to prove me wrong.
> If we would stop using fossils our economy would collapse and civillization also.
Nothing "stops" in that way. Instead it does exactly what we are doing right now. Slowly moving from one thing to another over a course of generations. When done that way there's no massive collapse.
>Coal is the fucking reason that he have advanced so far.
This is totally unknown. Had we not used coal, we may have started using any of the other types of energy sources out there and you may be spouting something like, "Gerbil energy farms are the fucking reason that we have advanced so far," levity granted.
>>7745554
>Unless you know just how much oil is left underneath the ground in key oil producing nations, you will never be able to definitively say that we are running out of oil.
If we can estimate it to 99% certainty, are you making the argument that we can survive on 1% of the current demand for oil? Or are you just making a god of the gaps argument?
>>7745560
>This is totally unknown. Had we not used coal, we may have started using any of the other types of energy sources out there and you may be spouting something like, "Gerbil energy farms are the fucking reason that we have advanced so far," levity granted.
I'm not that guy, but i was with you up until this point. Fossil Fuels are the sole source of the modern world. Coal powered trains which allowed goods and peoples to move farther and faster than ever before in history. Oil doubly so. There is a very small number of energy sources. Chemical, Nuclear, Annihilation, Photovoltaics. That is also the order of discovery.
There has not been a new energy source discovered in the century since photovoltaics.
>>7745571
But really, antimatter and chemical fuels are energy mediums, not energy sources. Oil enjoyed EROEI ratios of 1:100 for years because the earth did most of the work. Even now it's at 1:20. That cheat code is all that made this world possible. The 1:10 of nuclear won't cut it, and the 100:1 of Fusion certainly won't.
>>7745561
>If we can estimate it to 99% certainty, are you making the argument that we can survive on 1% of the current demand for oil? Or are you just making a god of the gaps argument?
We cannot estimate the current supply of crude oil to anything above 70%, which leaves a LARGE gap of uncertainty.
Keep in mind I'm only talking about estimating OPEC supply, for they are the ones who have a colossal effect on pricing. And of whom possess a significant fraction of reserves on this planet.
>>7745581
I fail to see how 30% = infinite. Biological sources can make 50,000 barrels of oil per day? Because that's how much the earth is using, per day.
>>7742770
This tbqfh
>>7745587
Make any assumption you'd like for how much power is generated by other sources like wind and solar. Calculate how much it would cost to replace even half of our -current- energy use.
The average non-fuel O&M cost for a nuclear power plant in 2014 was $1.64 per kWh.
The world's electricity consumption was 18,608 tWh in 2012 or 18.61 trillion kWh
So we can calculate that the cost of replacing our -current- use, assuming zero growth for the time it takes to make it (a practical impossibility) puts the -lower- estimate cost of just running the plants at 29.22 trillion dollars. Even if other sources replaced half the grid, that's still 15 trillion dollars. Add in the fuel costs, the mining costs, the refinement costs, the construction costs, finding enough coastline for the things, etc etc and it's more than the 77 trillion global gdp.
I like nuclear. I trust nuclear. But nuclear cannot fix it.
>>7745586
>infinite
I'm not arguing there is an infinite supply. I'm simply stating the "peak oil theory" is full of flaws.
We are estimating reserves based on output only. Not on what is proven to exist underneath the ground.
The large number of guesses (ranging from only a few years to 300 years) should be a tell tale reminder of the just how uncertain we are, given OPEC's unwillingness to release any information about their supply to anyone.
>>7745529
>>7745536
Solar panels as they are now are entering the "hybrid" stage. Where the panel itself is coupled with a secondary unit to harvest the thermal energy emitted, and normally lost, by the dark-colored solar panel. This is done in 2 ways. One is thermoelectric (TEG/Seebeck generator) and the other is thermal exchange using liquid to harvest the heat and pipe it into a building/home to heat water or the structure.
This cooling of the solar panel increases its efficiency and its life time.
The generation of active solar after the hybrids is already being worked on. It is a group of "paints" that allows you to merely brush/roll/spray on a few layers of paint across any surface you want to turn them into solar panels. This can include the entire outside of an automobile, house, or skyscraper. Though that later has its own tech, transparent solar panels used as glass windows (yes, clear solar panels).
>>7745596
>I'm not arguing there is an infinite supply. I'm simply stating the "peak oil theory" is full of flaws.
That's a contradiction. Peak oil says that there's a limit and that production will fall eventually as a result.
OPEC is reluctant to reveal it because it's a hell of a lot less than 300 years. If saudi arabia is willing to spend money to drill off their coasts, it means the Oman Deposit is empty or nearly so. That was the largest reserve known to man. Why do you think the USA has been at war with the middle east since saddam threatened to change all their oil exchanges from Dollars to Euros?
Look, if you want to refuge in unfalsifiable logic, fine. But don't expect us to listen.
>>7745597
A factor of two cost reduction is insufficient.
>>7745571
You misunderstand that statement. Society never ever needed fossil fuels to reach this tech level of civilization. That is just what the big fossil fuel companies want you to think. It is great propaganda after all. Every other type of energy source could be used to do the exact same thing.
>There is a very small number of energy sources. Chemical, Nuclear, Annihilation, Photovoltaics. That is also the order of discovery.
>There has not been a new energy source discovered in the century since photovoltaics.
Properly,
Kinetic energy, radiative energy, and potential energy (Nuclear, Chemical, Rest, and Electrical). We are not discussing these. We are discussing their subcategories (wind, hydro, thermal, nuclear plants, mechanical, fossil fuels, ect). you can't lump photovoltaics into the higher orders I listed like you did. It is improper. It goes with the latter list in this paragraph.
>>7745609
>A factor of two cost reduction is insufficient.
It has nothing to do with cost reduction really. Maybe I'm reading your sentence incorrectly and you are referring to something else?
>>7745634
>You misunderstand that statement. Society never ever needed fossil fuels to reach this tech level of civilization. That is just what the big fossil fuel companies want you to think. It is great propaganda after all. Every other type of energy source could be used to do the exact same thing.
The only source of energy before fossil fuels was human output. Economic growth can only exist with an energy surplus. Oil allowed that surplus because for every 1 unit of energy spent to get oil, we got 100 units of energy from the oil.
Other than that, I cannot convince you. because you are starting from the position that this is some sort of narrative, and not a basic fact.
>___ is too expensive boogeyman
No one is listening to you. People are going ahead with their plans anyway, regardless of what you have to say about it. It doesn't matter what you are for or against, that is the truth of it.
>>7745650
The world is doomed no matter what we do.
Struggle in vain all you wish. Maybe if we waste enough time and energy on false hopes it will bring the end all the more sooner.
>>7742825
>Batteries are the key to getting your solar and wind memes accepted by the economy
No, it isn't batteries. These technologies, as large scale power plants, normally do not use batteries. Instead they use thermal and kinetic storage systems. That's anything from insulated tanks of molten salts to magnet suspended, vacuum sealed, super fast spinning flywheels.
>>7745654
Which all have low efficiency ceilings.
It's a fundamental fact that no battery will ever have the energy density of gasoline.
>>7745666
But, I wasn't talking about batteries. Besides, batteries are slowly being replaced with new tech anyway.
I feel this thread is moving too fast for /sci/.
I'm pro-green. As in segregated farming, segregated energy production, non-chemical energy storage, energy conservation, and renewable energy. I own my own house with a little less than 40 acres of farmland. I have most all the accouterments of electrical life as well as farming life.
The more I learn online, the more I am able to change my habits at home. I'm able to use less resources of all kinds as well as be more efficient in most everything I do for work or play.
To prove I walk the talk about energy conservation and renewable energy, here's my latest electric bill (photos). This is to illustrate energy conservation. My only electrical outputs are my PC, sound system, ceiling/box fans, and a few LED lights. FYI, a few years ago, my electrical bill was over $200 monthly. Then I learned and adapted, because I wanted to, not because I was forced to fiscally. I just feel that once you learn something and doing nothing about it means you are part of the problem. Thus, I've been endeavoring to be less of the problem and perhaps convince others to do the same.
Most of my normally-battery-powered equipment are now super capacitor powered and get recharged from an exercise bike converted to a recumbent electrical generator. Which, I'm using this very moment. I can sit in my PC chair and pedal away the entire time I'm at the desk (pic to follow).
>>7745684
Here's the pedal power electrical generator in my workshop being tested and such. Oh, and to charge that battery there, it'd take all day pedaling and only trickle charge it, but I've charged it to full capacity before (12v 105aH deep cycle marine battery). Which is why I prefer using super capactors.
Right now, as I'm typing this, I'm charging a solid state flashlight I coverted to supercap use.
>pic was previously posted on /diy/ some time ago
Wind, solar and biogas won't drive us to the stars.
>>7745701
The stars cannot be reached. FTL is impossible, and there can be no economic motivator.
Science fiction is not prophecy.
The only reason SpaceX exists is to get a group of humanity off the earth before peak oil strikes. Musk himself admitted to that.
>>7745609
>Peak oil says that there's a limit and that production will fall eventually as a result.
Yet production is still holding steady.
>OPEC is reluctant to reveal it because it's a hell of a lot less than 300 years.
The British once made the claim that the level of crude oil supply would diminish sharply after 1970. 45 years later, they are still producing oil. Out of the same fields the British discovered years ago.
>Why do you think the USA has been at war with the middle east since saddam threatened to change all their oil exchanges from Dollars to Euros?
Don't look now, but the Euro wasn't around in 1990, when Saddam invaded Kuwait.
>Look, if you want to refuge in unfalsifiable logic, fine. But don't expect us to listen.
.....if you think for a moment we invaded Iraq in 2003 due to Saddam's threat to peg the price of oil to the Eurodollar, you're sadly mistaken....
>>7745726
>Out of the same fields the British discovered years ago.
Iranian oil fields, that is.
>>7745726
>Yet production is still holding steady.
Cite source.
>The British once made the claim that the level of crude oil supply would diminish sharply after 1970. 45 years later, they are still producing oil. Out of the same fields the British discovered years ago.
Anecdote is not evidence.
>Don't look now, but the Euro wasn't around in 1990, when Saddam invaded Kuwait.
2001, not 1990.
>.....if you think for a moment we invaded Iraq in 2003 due to Saddam's threat to peg the price of oil to the Eurodollar, you're sadly mistaken....
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/feb/16/iraq.theeuro
They had WMD's, Economic ones. Right after this is when chavez became head of OPEC and tabled the proposition to change ALL oil exchanges from dollars to Euros. That would have destroyed america overnight, so like a crack dealer protecting his turf, america made an example of iraq.
>>7745697
Which large sale are you referring to?
>You didn't manufacture those items.
I salvaged 95% of my stuff from used stuff. It makes /diy/ fucking livid.
>Your energy use is more than just what you consume at home.
That was merely 1 example out of my entire life. I'm not posting everything I do. But, I totally understand what you are meaning. Here's a great TED and book on the subject:
https://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toaster_from_scratch
It really helps illustrate your point I think.
My point is that even with small changes, people can do a tremendous amount. Be it conservation and non-usage, habit changes, or simply using a more efficient device.
>>7745743
>Which large sale are you referring to?
Even a state's economy would be too large.
>I salvaged 95% of my stuff from used stuff. It makes /diy/ fucking livid
You still have to account for the energy cost of manufacturing the items you salvaged.
>TED
no.
>My point is that even with small changes, people can do a tremendous amount. Be it conservation and non-usage, habit changes, or simply using a more efficient device.
When they have a farm and all that land to themselves, to a small degree.
But you have not reduced your energy usage by 90%. Maybe 40%. A band aid is not going to save us from a torn jugular.
>>7745731
>Cite Source
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil-idUSKBN0TC00O20151124
>Anecdote is not evidence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Persian_Oil_Company
>2001, not 1990.
Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990.
The United States declared war on Iraq in 2003.
>Chavez became head of OPEC
Keep in mind Chavez helped to keep the price of oil to record lows in 1999.
>>7745701
Solar can and I don't mean PV panels. Biogas wouldn't be used for anything since it is more difficult to maintain a biomass in a finite space. It wastes energy in a closed system like a space ship.
>>7745705
If we ever bring anything viable back like an ore rich asteroid then it will be viable economically. However, exiting the solar system itself will never be monetarily economic. It will only be "for science!" or to spread our population. There wouldn't be return trips. Then again, by the time something like could happen, there won't be any homo sapiens. Enough time will have passed that we'd be evolved into whatever comes next for us, homo something-or-other. If we last that long in the first place.
>>7745749
>source: OPEC
Surprise, surprise.
>wikipedia
There's no reference to anything you've said in that link.
>Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990.
>The United States declared war on Iraq in 2003.
They declared war in 2003 because that was the same year the Euro bounced back and iraq started making profits that made every other oil producing country consider dumping the dollar. They were made into an example.
>Keep in mind Chavez helped to keep the price of oil to record lows in 1999.
That's opec's job, which is why your first source is invalid.
>>7745750
>If we ever bring anything viable back like an ore rich asteroid then it will be viable economically
Nope. There is nothing in space worth the cost of a space launch and recovery of the material. You'd have to invent a magic, costless launch system like a bullshit space elevator.
Space colonization/exploitation is a plot hook for science fiction. Nothing more.
>>7745756
>They declared war in 2003 because that was the same year the Euro bounced back and iraq started making profits that made every other oil producing country consider dumping the dollar.
That was not the reason why Iraq was invaded.
And mind you, Iraq did NOT have the power to influence supply like OPEC does. They never did.
>That's opec's job, which why your first source is invalid.
....going back to the ORIGINAL argument, OPEC is keeping production (hence supply) steady.
It doesn't invalidate anything. Except your circular logic.....
>>7745763
>That was not the reason why Iraq was invaded.
Oh do tell. Do tell us why it was invaded. Give us the best reason you can come up with.
>And mind you, Iraq did NOT have the power to influence supply like OPEC does. They never did.
It doesn't have anything to do with influencing supply. If the dollar was no longer the required currency for oil exchanges, the usa would collapse economically overnight. You think zimbabwe has bad inflation?
>ellipses with four and five dots
Oh, you're that guy. My bad, your axioms make you unreasonable.
>>7745767
>Oh do tell. Do tell us why it was invaded. Give us the best reason you can come up with.
How about YOU provide the source to your incredible argument...since you're the fellow who made the incredulous statement?
>You think zimbabwe has bad inflation?
Iraq did not have any political pull to affect prices (via increasing production, or supply). They weren't even a member of OPEC.
>ellipses with four and five dots
That's the best retort you could muster? Attack my responses by simply counting how many dots I put at the beginning of a sentence?
>My bad, your axioms make you unreasonable.
....your "logic" is undermining your point.
Don't forget to cite your source when you respond...I'm curious to see how you managed to find out the root cause of the 2003 Iraq War.
>>7745762
See, you are speaking from current tech. When we have things like a station on the moon and can launch things from it the costs suddenly go down a great deal.
People will do it. That is inevitable. Why will they do it? Because they want to, not merely because it can turn a profit. It will be profiteers how stand on their shoulders that will go from there.
>>7745767
>Give us the best reason you can come up with.
It was to protect American freedoms. That's the only reason anything happens in those sandholes.
>>7745799
>Nobody is going to bother with you.
Did you have trouble finding a source for your outrageous remark? Of course you did.
>By the way, an ellipses only has three dots.
......oh really?
>>7745594
But you are already paying more than that in other sources
30 trillion spread over years is not much.
>>7745810
No it's 30 trillion annually. That's just the operation and maintenance cost.
>>7745805
This is my last response to you.
There is no proof that your flawed axioms would accept. It is pointless to have a conversation with you.
>>7745821
>There is no proof that your flawed axioms would accept.
Well if you would just take off your tin foil hat.......
>It is pointless to have a conversation with you.
That's because you won't provide some sort of evidence that would support your claims.
>This is my last response to you.
Don't worry, I'm sure there will be another neckbearded conspiracy theorist who will find it necessary to challenge logic and reason by throwing out absurdities and nonsense in an otherwise mature conversation thread....
>>7745799
>What a grand false narrative.
It is true though. Take away 1 thing and people will just use another. Falsely saying that without "x" people will fail is childish.
>>7745851
In all circumstances?
>>7741672
the only reason for a [properly informed] plasma physics grad to be sceptical about fission would be that due to regulation new reactors probably wont be out (long enough) before new fusion tech comes around (~15-20 years). nuke reactors are like 10 years from conttruction to operation (2-3years building, rest is regulation of the actual plant, wich is actually that slow) + development + regulatory pre approval of the design
TO ALL FISSION ENTHUSIASTS!!
GUYS GET IN HERE!!!!
>>7745875
>>7745875
>>7745875
>>7745875
>>7745875
NOW!
>>7741738
>life quality is much higher
because of oil. its not really sustainable without that. the country own a large % of the oil company there.
their healthcare is subpar, especially for what it costs.
and there arent any companies in the making to secure the future of the country.
upper echelon people are leaving (for the USA) because of the socialist shit going on there.
>>7741990
>nuclear power plant accident is a global disaster
here check pandoras promise
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiNRdmaJkrM
its made by and feateres environmentalists, who were formerly against nuclear.
you can find a nicer video quality on piratebay.la and also on the official website
some interesting facts:
chernobyl total death count as determined by WHO and others: 56
fukushima (due to radiation): 0
>>7745904
The thing with nuclear meltdowns is that they don't happen in a minute. The signals that shit is htting the fan will give enough time for the surrounding area to evacuate quickly, thus minimizing the amount of deaths. The worse thing about a nuclear meltdown is the fact you a huge piece of land will become a unlivable radioactive wasteland. In dense countries like France, Belgium, Germany, you don't want that. Not to mention the amount of genetic disorders people and their offspring will get who lived in that area.
>>7745913
the keepout is actually not very large
it was only largeish for chernobyl because they didnt have a protective dome. it was just ordinary warhouse style steel sheet. the concrete dome structure you see on fission plants is actually not part of the active shielding. its only purpose is to provide shielding specifically INCASE of a meltdown.
>unliveable wasteland
actually chernobyl is liveable these days. mostly because they dumped concrete on it.
radiation doesnt poison the ground. it works like light. it originates from a source. you put shielding around the source it stops. so unless the thing literally explodes, wich can happen if you dont understand the safety technology (because you stole it) and fuck up WHILE turning off all automated security, wich is what happened at chernobyl, there isnt danger of continued radioactivity (at all). chernobyl has nonzero but tolerable levels these days. you can live there. and farm and things.
remember: its not like poison. its a high energy beam (technically its a wave) that will wreck teleomeres if it hits them (possibly causing aging and cancer). it doesnt travel or stay like liquids/solids.
>the amount of genetic disorders people and their offspring will get who lived in that area
thats a meme really
the cases where this occured is from people who got a dose from naked molten core containments, ONLY because they both ignored the evacuation orders and chernobyl didnt have the concrete dome. it turns out sustained exposure to high radiation is bad for unborns. what a surprise. this wont if any of these come into effect
a) you dont ignore evacuation orders and sustain high radiation of and (this is important) relevant amount of time (days to weeks)
b) your local nuke plant has a dome
c) your local nuke plant isnt using 50's technology and instead one of the generation four designs, all of wich are meltdown proof (yes literal actual 100% physically impossible*)
*can meltdown as much as a piece of granite
>>7745634
>Society never ever needed fossil fuels to reach this tech level of civilization.
This is a whole new level of stupid
>>7745536
>But there's a physical limit to how cheap you can make any manufacturing process, and we can get at most a factor of two out of it since it's already 40% efficient.
Only super expensive multijunction cells are 40% efficient. The cells most panels are made out of are ~20% efficient, allowing for a potential four fold improvement, not just a two fold improvement, since the theoretical limit is in the mid 80's.
>>7746528
It is a difficult to understand concept for those suckling on the teets of big oil and big coal.
>>7741738
Thanks, beat me to it.
Also Denmark currently ranks 3rd in The World Happiness Report by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
>>7742252
>And when a nuclear meltdown happens, the results will be much more costly.
Agree. The nuclear industry privatizes profits and socializes losses, as the nuclear industry currently does not have to bear the total cost of cleanup, decontamination, and especially compensation for people and businesses who are killed, injured, displaced and are otherwise affected by nuclear energy disasters - these costs are almost entirely paid for by the general population through their governments.
>>7747369
That is such a good point. I've never thought of it in just that way before.
Maybe we can be coal companies to pay health care to everyone based on pollution released...
>>7741656
>Nuclear fusion is still decades away from being completely workable
Crystal balls are scientific!
>while wind and solar are getting increasingly efficient.
HAHAHAHA!
>>7747468
Why so triggered? Even the pro-nuclear people say the same thing.
>>7742214
A big part of the fallacy of this sort of argument is that it's all fossil fuel based. Sure it is, initially. After you have these turbines powering things future ores can be converted using wind energy into the necessary alloys. Bioplastics can take the place of plastic created through the use of fossil fuels, and turbine energy can be used to create the turbines themselves.
>B-but muh transportation costs
If people use electric cars to transport the materials and electric vehicles to do the work they could be running off of the same green energy.
Fossil fuels are a startup cost for these things. Once a non-oil based economy is running you wouldn't need fossil fuels to keep it going.
The real issue is the same as it has always been. The wind doesn't always run and the sun doesn't always shine. Thus you need to produce more energy than you need and store the excess. I'm fond of pumping water into an enclosed dam system and then letting it flow down into a reservoir through turbines when it's needed. You don't even need fresh water, ocean water would power turbines just as well. That has a pretty high startup cost, though, just like all energy storage methods.
>>7744879
You also have to factor in the lifetime energy production of the product. If a solar panel or wind turbine runs for 20-30 years then all the energy it produces should be weighed against the energy it costs to make it.
>>7747624
10,000% this
>Thus you need to produce more energy than you need and store the excess. I'm fond of pumping water into an enclosed dam system and then letting it flow down into a reservoir through turbines when it's needed. You don't even need fresh water, ocean water would power turbines just as well. That has a pretty high startup cost, though, just like all energy storage methods.
Also, have you seen the one where they have underwater balloons and they pump them up with air for under sea and under lakes? Then when needed, all that stored pressurized air is released to make energy.
http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/hydrostor-underwater-balloons/
Startup costs are low at least. I think there's a Euro one too.
>>7742201
>Joe Barton
Nice Guy
Dumb as a box of rocks.
This guy caters to every conceivable gun toting Texas voter in his constituency.
>>7742252
Yet statistically nuclear is still the safest form of production. At least so long as human lives matter to you.
Also we have newer generations waiting to be built. If they saw a chance to be developed they would be far safer and cleaner. Imagine, something like 95% of all our current nuclear waste (which we don't have any way to deal with) could be burned for more energy. Super cheap energy that actually solves most of a current waste problem.
It should happen.
>>7742621
We really need to post this on /pol/ . It proves India is advancing in shit based technology. We laugh now but they have 700 million asses currently shitting in the street. Imagine if all those brown people pointed their brown butts into these generators. It would be an industrial revolution and could even be almost carbon neutral. (An Indian eating a vegetarian diet. Carbon released from poo-> c02 absorbed by plants).
This is huge.
>>7748207
>Yet statistically nuclear is still the safest form of production. At least so long as human lives matter to you.
">lies, damned lies, and statistics"
The problem with this is the people who die from say solar energy are dying because they are falling off roofs during installation and during maintenance. It is a major problem that can be EASILY prevented with proper safety equipment and knowledge. Those numbers don't include mining deaths for the minerals that are used to make the solar panels nor those used for making the minerals all used in the construction of the nuclear power plants (though they do include the mining deaths for the fuel source). The point is, we don't know the total number of deaths for either of them because they are incomplete statistics that sample from different areas and shouldn't be compared as a result.
Solar panel operation doesn't rely on a massive multiple-stage redundancy safety check system. In fact, the only "safety" thing they do have are some fasteners that nail them to the roof or a post so they don't fall off. Nuclear power plants on the other hand have everything from from earthquake safeguards to terrorist attack safeguards.
The fact that one power source must be extremely well guarded and extremely well safeguarded from accident is in itself very telling. It says that this power source is extremely dangerous. Both for it actually melting down and causing an environmental disaster to that fact it highly centralizes the power supply so that if it goes down, a great many people have a power outage.
The main thing missing from a nuclear power plant safeguard is segregation of power generation. Its power affects too many people. If it goes down there's normally no backup. Renewable energies would be a terrific backup system for a nuclear power plant. Then comes the point, if you have that as a backup, why not us that instead? They are redundant and segregated by design after all.
>>7748218
>This is huge.
Yes, it is actually very huge, but in most countries, the tech and usage of it is barely known, let alone being used. A city like New York could have all of its power needs from organic refuse and blackwater. And, they'd have high nitrogen fertilizer as an export.
Germany and the Netherlands are countries that is big into biogas methane.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UafRz3QeO8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCebM7a5XBQ
Here's a lower tech version, on a farm in India
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l905W5Iz_es
>>7742201
I'm mad
>>7749237
You'll enjoy this,
https://youtu.be/L2m9SNzxJJA
>I was reminded of this episode as I watched a 10 minute video of a congressional hearing from November last year. It was the Science and Technology Committee hearing on global warming. One of the chief witnesses was Dr. Richard Alley, the Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at Penn State, and leading paleo-climate scientist in the world. He thinks, based on his research of ice-core data, among other things, that human-caused global warming is real.
>Representing himself, the United States and the people of the 46th district of California was Dana Rohrabacher. He is a politician and has never studied ice-core data. Nevertheless, he thinks human-caused global warming is a joke.
>>7749424
TRIGGER WARNING
>>7745652
This.
I'll be watching from my farm. Milling my wheat with windmills.
>>7748218
what's pols obsession with India's shitting habbit, are all retarded racists closet homos
>>7745705
I'll take the solar system first.
>>7749424
So a guy who makes a living pushing a hoax, and "studying it" believes it
What else is new.
>>7741656
>wind, and solar
You do not have a battery for store energy!
>>7749958
>batteries are they only form of energy storage
>>7741769
>getting treatment for cancer
>in USA
enjoy your $4.3M debt
