Solar FREAKIN' roadways discussion

[phoenix_ca]

<many words>

*sigh*

I said they need less area when operated and designed with safety in mind. Those accidents are hardly representative of the land-use impact of all reactors. Hell, the exclusion zone around Chernobyl isn't even all that radioactive. Most of it (and most of the zone around Fukushima) isn't even all that bad compared to what astronauts on the ISS get hit with. The effects of radiation tend to get over-blown:

(Note that this image implies that the entire western coast of North America and much of the western inland was almost completely wiped-out; 90-100% mortality.)

As for animals, they can keep on going just fine. Or at least they probably can. Adaptation and natural selection. I will agree that it's a right mess we've made of those areas, but not that it some how causes dire harm to the environment. We humans just don't want to live there.

No, I doubt that you could put wind farms in the middle of people's crop fields. Where would you run the cables? Above ground? Hardly practical. Bury them? You'd have to bury them even deeper than usual to avoid the tilling that farmers do to their fields.

And I strongly disagree about the idea that nuclear power is "only cost effective if you manage to bribe the autorities to skip security measures". Canada has been using nuclear power for decades now, in a very safe and regulated manner, where safety is of paramount concern. After Fukushima we turned around right away, figured-out the potential risks to our own reactors, and acted to mitigate those risks almost immediately. And all that nuclear energy is still produced at a reasonable cost. Not dirt cheap, but on-par with things like hydro or solar.

Edited June 11, 2014 by phoenix_ca

[vger]

Also, simple lesson, don't build nuclear plants so close to major fault lines.

[phoenix_ca]

Also, simple lesson, don't build nuclear plants so close to major fault lines.

It wasn't the earthquake so much as the tower of water that hit it. The earthquake certainly didn't help matters.

[Vanamonde]

More threads on same subject merged.

[78stonewobble]

1.Sorry, but you are wrong.

wo year back, the anual study that was delivery to the main investors from the energy industry it began to show that many of the renewable energy as wind, solar, etc. showed more cost benefit (and I am talking only from the economic point of view, without add the ecologic benefic) than their fossil or nuclear competitors.

In these studies they take into account not only the development costs, they take into account the risk for fails, the new policys and taxation to come, maintenance, efficiency, etc.

So right now, if someone want to invest in the energy industry, it will have more profits if he/she invest in renewable.

In fact, there is still some fossil or nuclear plants being development just becouse in some countries these technologies had a HUGE subsidies due to old policies, they also get tax-free agreements bribing the right people.

This happens becouse the owners of the old energy technologies (which had licenses for coal, oil or nuclear thermal plants) result to them more cheap use their own technology than buy a new one.

2. Geothermal is very good, but you can only do it with good cost in some geo thermal spots.

Long Time ago I thought the same about nuclear, then I realize of the huge cost that it has. You should read about it.

3. Now all remind that this opinion was only from the economic point of the investors. If you now add all the benefics from the ecologic point of view, to keep talking about non renewable energy is super dumb.

1. How can I be wrong, when I didn't even bring up economics in my argument.

I know nuclear is expensive, especially if done as safe as possible, but I find that irrelevant compaired to the number of lives it might save.

PS: How do you even predict taxation 50 years ahead? Regardless of technology in question.

2. Geothermal is not so good, if you trigger earthquakes and need to abandon the project.

3. No amount of solar/wind power is gonna replace the need for a dependable electrical capacity in the form of ie. a coal power plant. We have coal power plants here, they're the main polluters in our electrical sector. Those are the ones I want to replace. I don't want to add pollution, by manufacturing hundreds of square kilometers worth of windmills and solar arrays, that does not remove the polluting we are allready doing.

[78stonewobble]

Also, simple lesson, don't build nuclear plants so close to major fault lines.

You could offcourse just build a seawall of suitable height and be safe. Like they did at that other nuclear powerplant even closer to the earthquake, which was fine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onagawa_Nuclear_Power_Plant#2011

Edited June 11, 2014 by 78stonewobble

[mdatspace]

2. Geothermal is not so good, if you trigger earthquakes and need to abandon the project.

Geothermal produces small earthquakes that have no effect on power production.

[Reddragon]

Call me stupid, but I think nuclear fusion has so far the best chance to be the future's sustainable power production next to solar farms. I like the idea of these panels but they still seem to be too complex and I don't see how they could be cost-effective in the near future.

[AngelLestat]

AngelLestat, all things considered, unless we tackle fusion, solar will probably ultimately win out. It may not be with the kind of solar cells we're accustomed to though. Eventually we'll probably be doing all of this with bioengineering. Solar cells will be 'alive' and won't even need maintenance because they can heal themselves.

I am agree.

With respect to fusion, that would be of great help if some day we can overpass the 20 years prediction, more than 50 years past and we still have the same prediction.

I tried to read your post but the hyperbole got in my eyes.

Source? I get the feeling that you are exaggerating severely here. If anything the radius of the area that is affected in any way even at all like what you are talking is more like 30km, and that's not a full circle, because Fukushima was on the coast. And of that area, the area that is likely to be affected for thousands of years is an order of magnitude smaller.

It's not an area of 30km, like a target. It's some spots in an area of 30km.

AngelLestat's post grossly overexaggerates.

All what I said is TRUE. But first some geometric lessons and clarifications for some of you.

When I said 100km of diameter, is the same thing that 50km of radius.

http://www.rferl.org/content/fukushima_what_is_a_dafe_distance/3550373.html

Japan said 30 km, but their are lying, the safe margin is 50 km, Canada, USA and Britain said that it needs to be 80km (RADIUS).

And the SEA area in the radius also counts! They used those waters to fish. In fact they found some fishes with 2500 times the legal safe margin for consumption.

So.. I'm exaggerating? NO.

*sigh*

I said they need less area when operated and designed with safety in mind. Those accidents are hardly representative of the land-use impact of all reactors. Hell, the exclusion zone around Chernobyl isn't even all that radioactive. Most of it (and most of the zone around Fukushima) isn't even all that bad compared to what astronauts on the ISS get hit with. The effects of radiation tend to get over-blown:

Astronauts get high levels of radiation because they have no other option, is the risk that they take. For 18 month in space the risk of death is 3%.

But what if you LIVE inside the 30KM radius of fukushima?

(Note that this image implies that the entire western coast of North America and much of the western inland was almost completely wiped-out; 90-100% mortality.)

If you dont know choose your sources is not my fault, of course in those distances and air volume the amount of radiation would be very low. The inverse square law has something to do.

But we are not talking about 6000 km away. We are talking of 50km. That is a very different story.

As for animals, they can keep on going just fine. Or at least they probably can. Adaptation and natural selection. I will agree that it's a right mess we've made of those areas, but not that it some how causes dire harm to the environment. We humans just don't want to live there.

First, it does not said nothing about canser or other issues that the animals may have. Is talking only about birds.

And it is easy to said when it is not you who has to walk or swim out there.

No, I doubt that you could put wind farms in the middle of people's crop fields. Where would you run the cables? Above ground? Hardly practical. Bury them? You'd have to bury them even deeper than usual to avoid the tilling that farmers do to their fields.

You can buried at 1 mts like all street wires or just put some poles until you reach the closest grid wire.

And I strongly disagree about the idea that nuclear power is "only cost effective if you manage to bribe the autorities to skip security measures". Canada has been using nuclear power for decades now, in a very safe and regulated manner, where safety is of paramount concern. After Fukushima we turned around right away, figured-out the potential risks to our own reactors, and acted to mitigate those risks almost immediately. And all that nuclear energy is still produced at a reasonable cost. Not dirt cheap, but on-par with things like hydro or solar.

How you can know if they obey the regulations? Becouse there is a law? And who control those laws?

In all the world all is ok until an accident occurs and then you realize in the investigations that the company skip many safety measures.

I dont have info about Canada on nuclear, but I know that they dont care much about the oil extraction from the earth in their forest.

I live in Argentina and we have Nuclear plants too, we dint buy the technology, it was develpement here since 1980. Even so, the cost per MW of the last plant made it last year is higher than our renowable competitors. So there were a few accusations of corruption.

But is not my only source.

What is the cost for deal with the radiation wastes? Maybe is not so high if you sell the waste to poor countries. So you dont have to pay much, but someone will.

Edited June 11, 2014 by AngelLestat

[xcorps]

So.. I'm exaggerating? NO.

Yes, you are. You stated that there was a 100km hole in Japan that won't be used for 25,000 years.

That isn't true, even by your own sources.

[Kryten]

I am agree.

10 mSV is a tenth of the legal yearly limit, and is far below the dosage shown to have any significant medical effect.

[78stonewobble]

Geothermal produces small earthquakes that have no effect on power production.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_seismicity_in_Basel

Well, here the largest one lead to 2.700 damage claims worth 6.5 million to 8.3 million U.S dollars and project shutdown.

Maybe it was just the wrong place and knowledge has increased since then, but it might also mean that we can never be quite sure that such projects will be completely safe or viable in all the areas we want to put them.

[78stonewobble]

10 mSV is a tenth of the legal yearly limit, and is far below the dosage shown to have any significant medical effect.

For nuclear workers right? Civilian limits is somewhat lower right?

Natural background radiation on the other hand is somewhere betwen 0,5 to 5 mSV yearly.

Edited June 11, 2014 by 78stonewobble

[ZedNova]

http://solarroadways.com/military.shtml

Okay, this is just plain silly.

[maccollo]

http://solarroadways.com/military.shtml

Okay, this is just plain silly.

I laughed so hard at that. Parachutes? Cameras pointing everywhere? A satellite dish?

GO GO INSPECTOR SOLAR BRICK!

[phoenix_ca]

Geothermal produces small earthquakes that have no effect on power production.

Actually, that's a maybe. Specifically these concerns come from fracking, which might help cause earthquakes. If true, they might be small enough to ignore, or the might be so big that geothermal near fault lines is a terrible idea (which is a problem since most of the best places for geothermal are right on fault lines). We just don't have enough data.

Edited June 11, 2014 by phoenix_ca

[AngelLestat]

1. How can I be wrong, when I didn't even bring up economics in my argument.

I know nuclear is expensive, especially if done as safe as possible, but I find that irrelevant compaired to the number of lives it might save.

Lol, WTF? What lives? How a Fission reactor may save lives against renowable energy?

PS: How do you even predict taxation 50 years ahead? Regardless of technology in question.

With common sense, green technologies start to have benefics in many countries, there is an added value to the energy that is produced with renowable resources. It has to be take it into account in the price when you sell that energy.

The same happens with organic food. The study that I am talking about is the main study that is delivery to all invesors in that ruble. I guess it has its central in Harvard.

2. Geothermal is not so good, if you trigger earthquakes and need to abandon the project.

THere is 2 kinds of geothermal, one is with a close circuit that only takes the heat from the earth, the second method is injecting water in the ground at great pressure, this heat up, increase the pressure and you move a turvine. The first one it does not have any issues.

The second one can produce very small earthquake but without danger. We need to take into account the amount of energy that we get from these plants and the amount of energy release in a real earthquake. There is not comparison.

3. No amount of solar/wind power is gonna replace the need for a dependable electrical capacity in the form of ie. a coal power plant. We have coal power plants here, they're the main polluters in our electrical sector. Those are the ones I want to replace. I don't want to add pollution, by manufacturing hundreds of square kilometers worth of windmills and solar arrays, that does not remove the polluting we are allready doing.

???

What are you saying?

That you can not remplace coal power plants by wind or solar plants? Why?

Forget about pollution added in the manufacturing, all that is include in some way in the cost of everything.

The cost of any product is a good base to determine the pollution and energy waste in its manufacturing.

So we just need to compare cost. And how many wind generator you thing that are needed to remplace a normal fossil plant?

Yes, you are. You stated that there was a 100km hole in Japan that won't be used for 25,000 years.

That isn't true, even by your own sources.

Ehh? A 100Km diameter hole has an area of 7853 km2, now calculate all blue area, add also the sea area and tell me how many km2 are?

How many years is then?

10 mSV is a tenth of the legal yearly limit, and is far below the dosage shown to have any significant medical effect.

Who are you to said what is safe and what is not??? And the limit that you are talking about is for nuclear workers!! The legal limit for a common citizen is 1 mSV!!! Ten times less.

IF you dont find problems with those values, then go there and live all your live at 40km distance. Then go to the beach, eat some fish with corn of those fields.

Then married, had 2 kids and slept in peace.

Is the World Health Organization and other organism who decide what is safety or not. Not you.

And my sources come from those organism.

[xcorps]

Your points are made with too much empty rhetoric and too much emotion. Nuclear power is fine. Neither Chernobyl nor Fukushima are successful arguments against it.

[phoenix_ca]

I am agree.

With respect to fusion, that would be of great help if some day we can overpass the 20 years prediction, more than 50 years past and we still have the same prediction.

Those predictions are based on the tokamak, which is just absurdly problematic. Dense plasma focus and polywell fusion devices have a very real chance of being practical in under a decade.

Astronauts get high levels of radiation because they have no other option, is the risk that they take. For 18 month in space the risk of death is 3%.

But what if you LIVE inside the 30KM radius of fukushima?

Bring on the radiation? It's not like I was saying you'd want to live there, just that people's reaction to nuclear disaster tend to be clouded in fear of a thing that can kill but they cannot see.

If you dont know choose your sources is not my fault, of course in those distances and air volume the amount of radiation would be very low. The inverse square law has something to do.

But we are not talking about 6000 km away. We are talking of 50km. That is a very different story.

That was an illustration of my point that I just reiterated. If you didn't make that connection it's your failing, not mine. I dare say my post was pretty clear.

First, it does not said nothing about canser or other issues that the animals may have. Is talking only about birds.

And it is easy to said when it is not you who has to walk or swim out there.

I would gladly tour the Chernobyl exclusion zone for the sake of science. The radiation there isn't all that terrible. A few milliseiverts above background; big freaking whoop. When there's science to be done, a little radiation isn't going to kill you. Radiation workers have a yearly dose limit of 50mSv. Scientific advancement and the progression of human society are worth that small price.

You can buried at 1 mts like all street wires or just put some poles until you reach the closest grid wire.

I can't tell what you're trying to say. Are you saying you should put poles in people's crop fields? Do you have any idea what kind of havoc that could wreak? What do you do when they fall over? Just put your planting on hold? Sure, it's not like planting seasons are...seasonal.

How you can know if they obey the regulations? Becouse there is a law? And who control those laws?

In all the world all is ok until an accident occurs and then you realize in the investigations that the company skip many safety measures.

I dont have info about Canada on nuclear, but I know that they dont care much about the oil extraction from the earth in their forest.

Unless you have proof, I've got to write this off as paranoia. As to Canada, yes, we have Alberta that loves to extract from the tar sands, but you know what? We don't even use most of that crap. The Americans do, and China wants in. We're a nation that earns its wealth through natural resources; I won't apologize for that, as many nations do. China does it with heavy metals, South American nations have done it with crude oil and precious metals.

By far, our power is generated by hydro, supplemented by wind, solar, and nuclear, with a few fossil fuel plants, the exception again being Alberta, which has a penchant for burning coal. Lots and lots of it. The other provinces are phasing-out coal power completely; Ontario closed its last coal-fired power plant this year, and a great deal of Ontario's power come from nuclear (Canadian-designed CANDU reactors).

And if oversight is what you want, Canada has great goddamn gobs of it. Say what you will, our reactors are pretty darn safe. Worst-case scenarios have been considered in detail and even if everything failed (meaning the reactor was damaged and the primary and secondary backups all fail and both kill methods fail and fire services and portable emergency equipment can't access the site), the radiation release would still be minimal. Plus you know, we don't put the damn things in tsunami areas.

What is the cost for deal with the radiation wastes? Maybe is not so high if you sell the waste to poor countries. So you dont have to pay much, but someone will.

Remarkably puny, at least in Canada. The entire stockpile of "spent" interim fuel for our reactors takes-up all of two soccer fields worth of water pools, and that fuel can be very slightly reprocessed and fed back into the reactors (if we had much interest in that; right now its just easier to shove more natural uranium in them). After it's finished in interim storage, it goes to dry storage in concrete casks, in concrete silos and vaults.

As I pointed-out earlier, nuclear power, when properly managed and designed, is ridiculously safe. The problems come when you have poor design and crap management.

Edited June 11, 2014 by phoenix_ca

[ZedNova]

I laughed so hard at that. Parachutes? Cameras pointing everywhere? A satellite dish?

GO GO INSPECTOR SOLAR BRICK!

All it needs are some legs and a oil slick dispenser.

[lajoswinkler]

That depends on the glass.

Still doesn't mean I think it's feasible, but I see no reason to assume that we can't produce a

. Heck, if we had infinite resources, we could make the whole bloody thing out of diamond.

thunderf00t did tackle that issue. Sapphire glass? USA would go bancrupt...

The whole concept is so funny it hurts.

[vger]

thunderf00t did tackle that issue. Sapphire glass? USA would go bancrupt...

The whole concept is so funny it hurts.

Going to take a wild guess that this whole thing is politicking in action. Doesn't matter if it can be proven to work. All that needs to happen is for someone to agree to pay for a single mile worth of it as a 'test,' and whoever has the contact can retire early and send ten kids to university.

[Dodgey]

Couple points.

Common sense is not an argument for anything apart for the existence of oxymorons.

Wind and solar can't be used for base load because they aren't a continuous power source. That's why they can't completely replace coal.

[Moss]

I would be against this concept even if it weren't for the scam-like nature of the project. For a start, solar panels are extremely bad at generating energy at our current level of technology. They're also quite fragile, which means that sticking them in roads where they are exposed to traffic and weather is a terrible idea. Thus for protection they have to be covered in some polymer that requires extensive maintenance and, because it's not 100% transparent, reduces the efficiency of the cells. You'd be much better off installing the things on the roof, something I'd support. And this whole thing about being able to heat up to remove snow? The amount of energy required to do that would far exceed their generation capabilities. I don't like solar power because as people have said, it's pretty pathetic at generating power. That's why I believe fusion power is the way to go for the future, because it's clean and near infinite with an enormous energy load. We should be devoting our resources to developing that, instead of these daft roadways. Until then, stick to fission power, at least for a little while.

[Skyler4856]

Before we go off into a discussion of other power sources, let us not forget what the implementation of these road ways would cause. I could easily see an Orion type situation in the Infrastructure sector; One project could take the vast majority of the funding, leaving very little for invaluable maintenance...