Best energy alternatives to stop global warming

[78stonewobble]

Lol, so the only thing that you can reply is something that I dint said and something that you dint read?

I never said that human life has a value.. (Of course it has, but I dint said it! haha joke xd)

I was just mention that an economic collapse has consequences too. And I also said that there is not point to compare fossil vs nuclear becouse we dont need nuclear to remplace fossil, we can just use renowable, even with storage is by far more cheaper if you count all nuclear costs. Read the link of the scientific american that is explained why load base is not an issue for renowable.

I can not explain all, that post was large enoght.

And all the things that you said "production, infrastructure, etc etc.." why you mention ?? is already included in the cost. And wind is cheaper!

What? you dont need production, infrastructure or space to set nuclear plants?

You can place a nuclear plant in a city or urban area? No! you cant.

The problem is that urban areas expand and some end being very close to nuclear plants, that is the reason why some of them needs military protection all the time. Becouse the risk with all that people so close increase.

And I am not saying "lets stop to use all our nuclear plants" that is silly. I am just saying "if we have the money to remplace a coal plant or to invest in more energy, lets choose a renowable option instead a new nuclear plant).

Because you ignore certain things... To make renewable energy seem more attractive.

You throw out a set of large numbers that supposedly shows how expensive certain things about nuclear power is.

I'm saying, that if we put in a little solar power here and a little windpower here, without replacing the large coal/oil/other fossilized sources of energyproduction (both electrical and heat). Which is all that everyone has been doing sofar. This will have a hidden cost of 12.500.000.000.000 $ (12.500 $ billion) over 125.000.000 lives lost (actually too late to do anything about that). That is the cost of not going nuclear so far. Depending on which statistics you use it's from tens of times worse to thousands of time worse than having picked nuclear energy.

That number up there, does not include any construction, infrastructure, space and removal of anything.

If we scale up your windenergy suggestion for 11 million people in japan. Then the cost of providing ie. 2 billion people with windenergy is 10.545.000.000.000 $ (10.545 billion $), which presumably does not include any of the costs necessary for guaranteeing energy on those pesky non-windy days or weeks.

Those large numbers against nuclear power... hundreds of billions, in the absolutely worst case. Are small... compaired to the tens of thousands of billions, it will cost to do little or everything.

Btw. you could make the same argument against windmills near cities. Some places in the world that isn't a problem, due the much smaller population growth.

I'm glad that you say it's silly to stop using nuclear powerplants. Unfortunately, there are no renewable energy solutions that let us replace our coal and other fossil fuel burning powerplants, so in essence you are arguing to do nothing.

Edited June 19, 2014 by 78stonewobble

[peadar1987]

And what exactly is this agenda? I am very curious what you have to tell about such an agenda.

Your agenda is that you apparently hate nuclear enough to ignore all of the facts that you have been presented with. You haven't even acknowledged the multiple posts telling you that 10,000 liquidators dead by 2014 is pretty much irrelevant, as statistically, at least that number would have been expected to die from natural causes.

All of you still not knowing what happened there at chernobyl watch this Youtube video.

However i fear many of you do not have the guts and time to face reality.

I know full well what happened at Chernobyl. I am a trained and accredited radiation protection supervisor. I have worked in the nuclear industry as a fuel route engineer. I couldn't go one day without hearing about Chernobyl. I have had entire week-long courses that focused on little else.

The reality is that Chernobyl was pretty much a worst-case scenario, a very poorly designed reactor that was very poorly operated. The death toll from it, according to a committee of no less than eight UN bodies, is 43 directly, from radiation poisoning and thyroid cancer. They also estimate a further 4,000 shortened lives due to an increased risk of cancer. Source here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Human_impact.

Huh... solar cells are made of mostly silicon, and small amounts of boron and phosphorus for the dopants, rare metals aren't used.

Sorry, that's my mistake. Rare earths, and materials like Gallium Arsenide are only used in a small proportion of solar cells, that haven't seen widespread commercial deployment.

The point still does stand though, as things like neodymium are widely used in the small generators needed for distributed wind, wave, and tidal power.

Also, a quick point on the costs of renewable energy.

It is great so long as it is only a small proportion of the energy mix (<20%), as it is inherently variable, and so in order to match supply and demand, the slack has to be taken up by other forms of generation. When the proportion of renewables gets too high, you need to start building dedicated load-balancing stations, like pumped storage, batteries, hydrogen electrolysis, flywheels, and so on. These have a loss in efficiency associated with them, as well as a very large capital cost. While most reputable publications will take this into account, some of the more militant and biased sources will completely neglect them, and act like we could replace our entire generation portfolio with wind for 10x the cost of replacing 10% of our portfolio with wind. That's simply not true.

[phoenix_ca]

France did a case study to simul the consequences of a full meltdown in one of their plants. The report was kept it in secret by many years due to how serious was.

It evaluated a range of disaster scenarios that might occur at the Dampierre plant. In the best-case scenario, costs came to €760 billionâ€â€more than a third of France’s GDP. At the other end of the spectrum: €5.8 trillion! Over three times France’s GDP. A devastating amount. So large that France could not possibly deal with it. Financially, France would cease to exist as we know it.

http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/France-Predict-Cost-of-Nuclear-Disaster-to-be-Over-Three-Times-their-GDP.html

If you read the article carefully, it sounds like that huge estimation had a massive amount of fudge factor in it. A kind of "what's the worst possible scenario we can imagine, and then assume all of the estimations of safety are lying and add a bunch to that number".

As to the article itself, it has it's own major failing:

These incidents have almost no probability of occurring, we’re told. So there are currently 437 active nuclear power reactors and 144 “permanent shutdown reactors†in 31 countries, according to the IAEA, for a total of 581 active and inactive reactors. Of these, four melted down so farâ€â€one at Chernobyl and three at Fukushima. Hence, the probability for a meltdown is not infinitesimal. Based on six decades of history, it’s 4 out of 581, or 0.7%. One out of every 145 reactors. Another 67 are under construction, and more are to come....

This is very poorly thought-out; it's in fact hasty generalization with a nice disguise. This assessment of probability makes the critical mistake of lumping all nuclear fission reactors together, regardless of country of operation, country of origin, and the design itself. Chernobyl can actually be more-or-less written-out of safety assessments of current nuclear facilities. We learned from it that certain types of graphite-moderated reactors are bad, bad news, and on top of that, that any reactor with a positive void coefficient is really, ultra bad design (positive void coefficient means that when coolant boils in the reactor, there is an increase in reactivity, which makes the entire design prone to run-away operation and meltdown; a cornerstone of reactor design is having a negative void coefficient, or if you have a positive void coefficient, you have extremely robust quick-acting passive safety systems to accommodate it).

Anyway, back to the generalization. I could say, with the very same logic, "There are currently 19 CANDU reactors in Canada, plus 5 decommissioned reactors, making for a total of 24. None of those reactors has ever had a meltdown. Therefore, the probability of a Canadian-owned CANDU reactor having a meltdown is zero." An incredibly simplistic and utterly worthless bit of drivel, just like that writer's attempt to assess probability. We can and should instead take a far more nuanced approach to assessing risk. What type of reactor is it? Has that particular type of reactor had failures in the past? How would such a reactor behave in a meltdown situation? (Not to toot my own country's horn overmuch but if you actually ask all those questions, you'll find that CANDU designs are remarkably safe and not prone to uncontrolled reactions at all. In a worst-case scenario the heavy water moderator in the calandria will evaporate, and while the core would be irreparably damaged by that point, the fuel isn't critical in light water, so pumping light water in to cool the reactor wouldn't positively effect criticality. This is actually one of the major problems that light water moderated reactors have, in that the fuel is critical in the water you're desperately trying to pump into the reactor to cool it, leading to something akin to a vicious tug-of-war.)

The point I'm trying to make here is that saying that all nuclear fission designs are inherently unsafe based on two cases of really badly designed reactors is off-base. What that should be is more of a cautionary piece of data of what not to do. Strict oversight and public inspection of nuclear facilities is an absolute must. I'm practically beating a dead horse here, but Fukushima-Daiichi was what we get for having terrible regulation of nuclear facilities, and on top of that, choosing the wrong types of nuclear reactors because the other ones on offer aren't American enough. I'd use it as an argument for tighter regulation, not using light water as a moderator, and actually keeping your bloody containment facility up to scratch. The better reactors we've made all have a fall-back "oh hell everything went wrong" setup where pressure can be released in an orderly manner from the containment building while passing over activated charcoal filters to remove most of the radioactive material from the air before its released into the environment.

Pretty simple lesson. Fission can be dangerous, treat with care. And build a proper containment building for pity's sake or you'll end-up just like Japan and Ukraine.

...

Man, all that and I didn't even get to the whole "thorium salts will probably be even safer, since the thorium isn't even critical with itself" bit.

Edited June 19, 2014 by phoenix_ca

[Seret]

The reality is that fewer people have died as a result of nuclear accidents and nuclear power has a smaller ecological footprint than any other source of power. That is not disputable.

I don't think it's anywhere near as clear-cut as you're trying to make out. If you look at the numbers I posted here the sum of all nuclear's externalities put it on about a par with gas, and with a substantially larger impact than renewables.

Estimation of externalities isn't an exact science, numbers from different sources will differ in detail, but they all agree in general.

Besides, nuclear vs renewables is a stupid argument. There're not mutually exclusive. An energy system with too much of either is undesirable, and they're good for different things.

[rtxoff]

Your agenda is that you apparently hate nuclear enough to ignore all of the facts that you have been presented with. You haven't even acknowledged the multiple posts telling you that 10,000 liquidators dead by 2014 is pretty much irrelevant, as statistically, at least that number would have been expected to die from natural causes.

You could not be more wrong. Actually i defended nuclear power in some posts before, just read all off the posts before. But one thing i can not stand is someone telling lies. Lies about what happened really at Tschernobyl. Lies at how many people really died there. Lies about the safety of nuclear power. Lies at how solar power is so bad. You said it's a lie that so many poeple died because WHO says other numbers. And you do not want to proof your charge. I say i trust more a local organisation there to know the numbers and also WHO lies and like you i am not going to give any proof for that. Also i say do not trust the scientists claiming nuclear power is safe. Instead of recognizing that people died of nuclear power they are lying to us about it. I won't put my future in the hands of such people. You can tell now what you want i am sure now for myself that nuclear power is the worst option we have now.

[Elthy]

You complain about the costs of renewables and the infrastructure related to them, but i mentioned before that Hinkley Point C, a new, nearly failsafe reactor, is so damn expensive that the british govenment has to pay them a gigant price per kW/h. Since you have to rebuild every reactor on the world do meet these security levels the costs will be far in the trillions.

Also new reatortypes like Thorium need lots of research which is very expensive due to the dangers involved and it takes years. Research in new energy storage technologies can be done by everyone and not just the big nuclear companies. More competition = even lower prices.

[peadar1987]

You could not be more wrong. Actually i defended nuclear power in some posts before, just read all off the posts before. But one thing i can not stand is someone telling lies. Lies about what happened really at Tschernobyl. Lies at how many people really died there. Lies about the safety of nuclear power. Lies at how solar power is so bad. You said it's a lie that so many poeple died because WHO says other numbers. And you do not want to proof your charge. I say i trust more a local organisation there to know the numbers and also WHO lies and like you i am not going to give any proof for that. Also i say do not trust the scientists claiming nuclear power is safe. Instead of recognizing that people died of nuclear power they are lying to us about it. I won't put my future in the hands of such people. You can tell now what you want i am sure now for myself that nuclear power is the worst option we have now.

I am not saying it's a lie that upwards of 10,000 people are dead. I am saying it's a lie that all of these 10,000 deaths were due to Chernobyl.

23 people, including the manager, were in the Soviet Union squad for the 1986 World Cup. Two of them (9%) are now dead. That doesn't mean that the 1986 World Cup is responsible for these deaths.

In the same way, just because 20% of the Chernobyl liquidators are now dead doesn't mean that this is necessarily due to Chernobyl.

You have convinced yourself that tens of thousands of people died as a direct result of Chernobyl, and you are dismissing every piece of evidence that disagrees with that opinion as a lie. I have provided my proof. Here is the full report if you care to read it: http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernobyl/chernobyl.pdf

It was put together by the World Health Organisation, The IAEA, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the UN Development Programme, the UN Environment Programme, The UN Scientific Commission on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, the World Bank, and the governments of Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus.

If you want to call all of those organisations, and everyone who accepts their meticulously-researched findings, liars, then that's up to you, but please drop the belligerent attitude.

[peadar1987]

You complain about the costs of renewables and the infrastructure related to them, but i mentioned before that Hinkley Point C, a new, nearly failsafe reactor, is so damn expensive that the british govenment has to pay them a gigant price per kW/h. Since you have to rebuild every reactor on the world do meet these security levels the costs will be far in the trillions.

Hinkley Point C is an EPR (European Pressurised Reactor). This programme has hugely overrun on costs, and has suffered badly from a lack of overseas customers, and the project management disaster al Olkiluoto. It is not a typical nuclear build, it is far more expensive. And EDF pulled off an amazing coup by getting the UK government to guarantee those prices (they knew that the government was panicking because they needed the plant built before the AGRs start to go offline in the next 10-15 years). I know this because I worked for EDF at the time. People in the company were actually incredulous at how well Vincent de Rivaz did getting that deal. EDF are going to make an absolute killing from it.

Take a CANDU reactor for a far better example of a good reactor design. Not every nuclear plant will be a HPC or a Olkiluoto.

Also new reatortypes like Thorium need lots of research which is very expensive due to the dangers involved and it takes years. Research in new energy storage technologies can be done by everyone and not just the big nuclear companies. More competition = even lower prices.

Theoretical research into Thorium can be done by anyone as well. Especially as the main problems with a molten salt Thorium Reactor are ones of material science, not nuclear physics. It's just as easy for a small organisation or an individual to do research into the effects of FLiBe salts on carbon fibre manifolds as it is to investigate a new design of flywheel or a more reliable fast-discharging battery.

[rtxoff]

I am not saying it's a lie that upwards of 10,000 people are dead. I am saying it's a lie that all of these 10,000 deaths were due to Chernobyl.

23 people, including the manager, were in the Soviet Union squad for the 1986 World Cup. Two of them (9%) are now dead. That doesn't mean that the 1986 World Cup is responsible for these deaths.

In the same way, just because 20% of the Chernobyl liquidators are now dead doesn't mean that this is necessarily due to Chernobyl.

You have convinced yourself that tens of thousands of people died as a direct result of Chernobyl, and you are dismissing every piece of evidence that disagrees with that opinion as a lie. I have provided my proof. Here is the full report if you care to read it: http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernobyl/chernobyl.pdf

It was put together by the World Health Organisation, The IAEA, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the UN Development Programme, the UN Environment Programme, The UN Scientific Commission on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, the World Bank, and the governments of Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus.

If you want to call all of those organisations, and everyone who accepts their meticulously-researched findings, liars, then that's up to you, but please drop the belligerent attitude.

Did you even read that report you have linked?

Nevertheless, the accident was a human tragedy and had significant enviromental, public health and socio-economic impacts.

Childhood thyroid cancer caused by radioactive iodine fallout is one of the main health impacts of the accident. Doses to the thyroid received in the first few months after the

accident were particularly high in those who were children at the time and drank milk

with high levels of radioactive iodine. By 2002, more than 4000 thyroid cancer cases

had been diagnosed in this group, and it is most likely that a large fraction of these

thyroid cancers is attributable to radioiodine intake.

However, in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and in certain limited areas some restrictions on

land-use will need to be retained for decades to come.

Even if that workers did not die immediately there is no doubt that many of them died afterwards of the causes. Saying "they did not die necessarily because of the radiation they where exposed" is pure ignorance.

[SargeRho]

and it is most likely that a large fraction of these

thyroid cancers is attributable to radioiodine intake.

That means a large part of those 4000 may have gotten Thyroid Cancer due to Chernobyl. Not that 4000 have gotten TC due to Chernobyl.

31 emergency workers died from the reactor cleanup - of 134 diagnosed with radiation sickness. 19 more have died since then, and not all of them because of Chernobyl.

Cancer mortality

It is impossible to assess reliably, with any

precision, numbers of fatal cancers caused

by radiation exposure due to Chernobyl

accident."

There have been many post-Chernobyl studies of leukaemia and cancer morbidity in

the populations of ‘contaminated’ areas in the three countries. Most studies, however,

had methodological limitations and lacked statistical power. There is therefore no convincing evidence at present that the incidence of leukaemia or cancer (other than

thyroid) has increased in children, those exposed in-utero, or adult residents of the

‘contaminated’ areas. It is thought, however, that for most solid cancers, the minimum

latent period is likely to be much longer than that for leukaemia or thyroid cancer

 of the order of 10 to 15 years or more  and it may be too early to evaluate the full

radiological impact of the accident. Therefore, medical care and annual examinations of

highly exposed Chernobyl workers should continue

In the end, there were 31 deaths directly attributable to Chernobyl, and possibly up to 4000 cancer deaths. That's not a whole lot actually.

[Seret]

Saying "they did not die necessarily because of the radiation they where exposed" is pure ignorance.

That actually sounds like a perfectly reasonable statement. Exposure to a non-fatal dose of radiation gives an increased probability of health problems later, it doesn't guarantee it. It's very difficult to positively link an individual's later health problems to earlier radiation exposure, although it's reasonable to do so in aggregate on larger populations. But at that point you're really just inferring a cause, which relies on the strength of the model you're using to make the correlation.

Edited June 19, 2014 by Seret

[theend3r]

Besides, nuclear vs renewables is a stupid argument. There're not mutually exclusive. An energy system with too much of either is undesirable, and they're good for different things.

I totally agree. It's a shame many countries are swayed with propaganda (e.g. Germany, Austira) and fail to see this.

[rtxoff]

I agree with building nuclear power plants under one condition. All you scientist which are defending nuclear power sign upfront a contract where you volunteer to clean up any radioactive mess that may be caused by an nuclear accident. Also all of you sign up for working at least half of the year in uranium mines.

It's easy to show winter the teeth when your butt is in the warm.

[rtxoff]

I totally agree. It's a shame many countries are swayed with propaganda (e.g. Germany, Austira) and fail to see this.

Propaganda is a very dangerous word you are using there. You are not doing anything differnt then propaganda. It's just depends which side you are on.

[peadar1987]

I agree with building nuclear power plants under one condition. All you scientist which are defending nuclear power sign upfront a contract where you volunteer to clean up any radioactive mess that may be caused by an nuclear accident. Also all of you sign up for working at least half of the year in uranium mines.

It's easy to show winter the teeth when your butt is in the warm.

You're being irrational.

You're in favour of switching to all-renewables. Great. So are you going to volunteer to work in a neodymium mine for half a year, climb up all of the wind turbines to test the risk of falling, volunteer your favourite mountain area to be turned into a pumped-storage reservoir, flood your home for a hydroelectric scheme, and swim down to the bottom of the Pentland Firth to inspect the foundations of tidal current generators.

My real question is this:

Why are you so dead set against nuclear (you claimed yourself just a few posts ago that you were sure that nuclear was the worst option we have), when fossil fuels demonstrably kill and injure orders of magnitude more people? Why are you applying a double standard? Nobody is claiming nuclear is perfect, but when your choice is between nuclear, fossil fuels, and having the lights go out, it's by far the lesser of three evils.

And if I believed nuclear power was dangerous, I wouldn't have chosen to work in a nuclear plant, and live within sight of the reactor building.

Edited June 19, 2014 by peadar1987

[theend3r]

Propaganda is a very dangerous word you are using there. You are not doing anything differnt then propaganda. It's just depends which side you are on.

My bad, I should've used demagoguery instead.

[phoenix_ca]

You meant to say you "wouldn't" live near a nuclear power plant, right peadar?

[Dodgey]

I agree with building nuclear power plants under one condition. All you scientist which are defending nuclear power sign upfront a contract where you volunteer to clean up any radioactive mess that may be caused by an nuclear accident. Also all of you sign up for working at least half of the year in uranium mines.

It's easy to show winter the teeth when your butt is in the warm.

Why limit this to nuclear? Why not apply this other resources such as oil, coal, sulphur or even diamonds to go to the extreme.

[peadar1987]

You meant to say you "wouldn't" live near a nuclear power plant, right peadar?

Of course I did, good spot!

[theend3r]

I agree with building nuclear power plants under one condition. All you scientist which are defending nuclear power sign upfront a contract where you volunteer to clean up any radioactive mess that may be caused by an nuclear accident. Also all of you sign up for working at least half of the year in uranium mines.

It's easy to show winter the teeth when your butt is in the warm.

Deal. And you'll construct and repair wind turbines in return which will, with high probability, kill you far sooner than us.

[shynung]

Anyone here have any info on MHD generators? They look rather promising, according to Wikipedia.

EDIT: I know that this is not a power source in and of itself, but since we're talking about energy sources, it seemed like improving the efficiency of current designs is also of interest.

Edited June 19, 2014 by shynung

[PakledHostage]

Deal. And you'll construct and repair wind turbines in return which will, with high probability, kill you far sooner than us.

Yeah, it's sad. KSP had the friendliest and most interesting community I knew, still probably has. Posts like this or the pro-/anti- nuclear/renewable threads make me lose faith little by little though.

Introspect much?

[m4v]

nuclear power plants are safer because the people there don't screw around, even a small mishap has the potential to be very costly in either damages or just bad PR. Did some worker fell down from a wind turbine? gee what an idiot. Did a whole wind turbine fell down? who the hell cares, build another sometime later.

[Elthy]

Take a CANDU reactor for a far better example of a good reactor design. Not every nuclear plant will be a HPC or a Olkiluoto.

All build CANDUs are last gen, there is only the plan for an advanced version with increased security (like EPR). As long as this version isnt build noone can say how expensive it is, i assume its the same with every other project of this size: It get way more expensive than anyone ever thought.

nuclear power plants are safer because the people there don't screw around, even a small mishap has the potential to be very costly in either damages or just bad PR. Did some worker fell down from a wind turbine? gee what an idiot. Did a whole wind turbine fell down? who the hell cares, build another sometime later.

Thats the good thing on wind/solar, you cant mess it up. Maybe someone falls of a roof (wont happen since there are security lines etc.) or, the worst i can imagine, a wind turbine falls. Since they are build in unpopulated areas it can hit a peasant, but thats as unlikely as a meltdown...

Edited June 19, 2014 by Elthy

[PakledHostage]

We might as well, given the content of the debate. Propaganda, misinformation, histrionics, hyperbole, ad hominem, and fear mongering don't make for a rational discussion. And that's what the anti-nuke side brings to the table.

So you finished off a post in which you criticize the nature of this debate by taking a pot shot of your own?