Solar panels are obnoxiously inefficient, it's best to just move to nuclear energy.
Solar panels are obnoxiously inefficient, it's best to just move to nuclear energy.
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Not really. Also something like 0.3% of Sahara could supply the entire EU with current cheap tech.Originally Posted by 003
Another point is energy conservation, people simply waste too much on nothing.
Lastly, the price for nuclear pwoer will go up rapidly. We got plenty of Uranium. But its abit like oil. Supply and demand plus harder and harder time mining it.
And unlike nuclear plants, you dont have some high danger risk lurking.
The point is simply to mix solar, wind, wave, thermal, bio etc energy.
Honestly, the sea rise would be the least of your worries. Sea current changes, extreme weather, failed harvests etc is what you will worry even more about.Where I live, our city been building an emission neutral neighbourhood. Lot's of green, and ALLOT of solar pannels ( every house has their own ), and central heating with geo storage. Makes me kind of less pessimistic about being able to still walk here in 20 years or that rising sea water would ensure we'd have to swim.. If they hurry with these innovations, the future is looking very dry ..erhm.. I mean good
I'm abit confused though, electrolyse has been known for ages and I can't really grasp the MAJOR change this time around, maybe a native englisch speaking person can explain what I am missing from the article?
Last edited by Shintai; 08-01-2008 at 12:47 AM.
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EXACTLY!
The answer to me is to take a look at where you live, and use the parts that benefit you best, and cheapest to implement.
If all of the options are put to use the answer is there.
We just as a society just have to make up our minds to do it.
I look at where I live. Solar doesn't give the return that it does in Arizona, but almost 70% of what they get.
Not a lot of fast running large rivers but we do have the Merrimack and Connecticut rivers and they aren't exactly little streams.
Wind? The highest winds ever recorded were on top of Mt. Washington 70 miles from me(239MPH)
It is there, even in a place like I live where it's not that obvious.
This announcement made my morning!
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thats not possible for most countries (norway is an exeption, and it also might be possible for austira to subtitute all of its electrical power generation with alternative power sources) but we are only talking about elelctrical electrical power generation. When you take heat genearation into the equation you simply cant satisfy the demand with alternativ energy sources alone.
The biggest problem you have is the economic growth, people/industry always need more energy and theres only a limited potential to exploit in each country. Take france for example, they nearly have used all there hydropower potential but it only makes up for a tiny ammount of there energy needs, even with windpower and so on. Right now they need nuclear energy or they have no electrical energy at all.
Last edited by Hornet331; 08-01-2008 at 01:14 AM.
Its quite easy actually. Hell here in Denmark some 20% comes from wind alone. And that could easily be 100%.thats not possible for most countries (norway is an exeption, and it also might be possible for austira to subtitute all of its electrical power generation with alternative power sources) but we are only talking about elelctrical electrical power generation. When you take heat genearation into the equation you simply cant satisfy the demand with alternativ energy sources alone.
The biggest problem you have is the economic growth, people/industry always need more energy and theres only a limited potential to exploit in each country. Take france for example, they nearly have used all there hydropower potential but it only makes up for a tiny ammount of there energy needs, even with windpower and so on. Right now they need nuclear energy or they have no electrical energy at all.
But its about will and money. Capitalism simply dont have any interest in it. Since oil=massive profit.
If we had "civileconomics" so to say. We would have been without oil 10-20 years ago. Its easy to supply all the energy and 100 times more with renewable. Its comparable to the 50s with doctors says smoking is good to believe we cant live without oil. nuclear, coal etc.
However on a capitalistic point. Conserve energy to reduce the actual price is the key. takes countries like USA where 1 citizen wastes about 3 times more than the average european. And for what? Nothing...and even in europe we got plenty to save.
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The key is that each countries "answer" is different based upon what they have to work with.thats not possible for most countries (Norway is an exception, and it also might be possible for Austria to substitute all of its electrical power generation with alternative power sources) but we are only talking about electrical electrical power generation. When you take heat generation into the equation you simply cant satisfy the demand with alternative energy sources alone.
The biggest problem you have is the economic growth, people/industry always need more energy and theres only a limited potential to exploit in each country. Take France for example, they nearly have used all there hydro power potential but it only makes up for a tiny amount of there energy needs, even with wind power and so on. Right now they need nuclear energy or they have no electrical energy at all.
Solar, to some degree, works for all.
no, it isn't the total answer but a part of that answer.
Then countries with large fast flowing rivers use hydro in addition.
Some can use Geo thermal..
It's looking at the entire problem and then applying what "you" have for resources that can solve the problem.
Even if the best case scenario in some countries is to only do 50% of the needs thats one hell of improvement over what is done now.
My personal feeling is that to start I'd like to see a law passed that every new home built HAS to be self sufficient in it's needs in electrical power to a 20% overbuild of projected needs then any extra not needed gets sold back to the grid. It would add a chunk to the price but that new additional home would not be furthering the degradation of the planet or adding additional loads to an already overburdened electrical grid( in the USA)
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Great idea, and i also would like to see that, but electric supply company and the FBCs would hate that with passion. Just as shintai mentioned this is not a technical problem but more like a financial problem.
Yes, I agree on that also but there does come a time for the "greater good" and if enough people stand up and demand it, it will be done.
Get 50 million people in the US to sign a petition stating that they demand action on these issues in 18 months or those elected officials will NOT be reelected and you'd see fast action.
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+10
I think we are all sick of life long stodgy campers.
.
Well potentially they could switch to a breeder reactor which is much more efficient but nobody is willing to insure a nuclear power plant nor do many people want them in their back yards. So having something thats running on plutonium is kinda terrifying. Ironically I wouldn't be surprised if brainwashed people in Southern states would be fine with them considering they seem to think everything is fine climate wise since theirs never changes and oil companies control everything. Unlike the rest of us who have seen drastic changes in the last 20 years especially people living in colder climates.thats not possible for most countries (norway is an exeption, and it also might be possible for austira to subtitute all of its electrical power generation with alternative power sources) but we are only talking about elelctrical electrical power generation. When you take heat genearation into the equation you simply cant satisfy the demand with alternativ energy sources alone.
The biggest problem you have is the economic growth, people/industry always need more energy and theres only a limited potential to exploit in each country. Take france for example, they nearly have used all there hydropower potential but it only makes up for a tiny ammount of there energy needs, even with windpower and so on. Right now they need nuclear energy or they have no electrical energy at all.
Having tax / subsidies for older houses which are drastically inefficient would be better. Think of the millions and millions of houses who haven't changed since the the 50s upgrading them is relatively easy compared to some which were built in the early 1900s. 2 years ago I lived in a 100 year old house and our heating bill for 1 month in winter was $400. Plus these upgrades are good for local economies and yes putting rules on new houses would be great too. The thing is you can go to cities now where they need to meet code X and they are only built to code Y.
Last edited by Glow9; 08-01-2008 at 01:28 AM.
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No argument from me on this at all.
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Just this year, we put on a new roof, resided the house and instead of the R1 underlayment custom ordered the R4 underlayment, dumped a 18 year old 25 cu ft refrigerator that was still working fine and replaced with a new $1500.00 21 cu ft model that takes 1/10th the elec to run.
Add new Low E double pane windows, 13w halogen bulbs vs the 100w incandescents and you understand how I feel about this issue.
Two days ago I had 112 gallons of heating oil delivered. $502.54..
Need I say more?
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oh yeah... the only problem photovoltaic has right now is price, if it gest cheaper, lets say 2-3€ per m² and has a efficency of 2-3% hell yeah i take that any day over nuclear energy. With that price efficency doesn't matter. I just plaster my roof with that.
Nuclear energy is only a short term solution, we already consume more uran than it is mined and it doesn't get better, there are 93 plants planed worldwide with 24 in china alone.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/info.html
Last edited by Hornet331; 08-01-2008 at 01:13 AM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing
currently we use 0.7% of the uranium mined. The rest is put into "storage." For the last 30 years the number of nuclear power plants has remained constant and thus we have 30 years of 0.7% usage. At current usage the other 99.3% would get us 4,200 years. Thats just the uranium we already have stored above around at the nuclear power plants. Not including reserves in the ground. If you include the reserves in the ground we are talking about in the 10's of thousands of years.
summary of features
-zero emissions
-practicially unlimited energy source
-minimal land usage (solar and wind use quite a bit)
-reliable (solar and wind are not)
-safe (pebble reactors are impossible to melt down)
-self-sustaining (billions in subsidies are not required)
-environmentally safe (producing solar panels requires the manufacture of many toxic chemicals...same for the plastics wind turbines are constructed from)
Last edited by zabomb4163; 08-02-2008 at 11:29 AM.
I would say thats quite a wrong statement by a massive magnitude.
However, as also said earlier. We got plenty of uranium in the ground. But its just getting more and more expensive to digg out. That means prices are rising fast and nuclear power equally to increase cost. Also the supply of cheap fuel from old russian nukes and such is close to an end.
In dec. 2001 the price on NA UF6 was about 30$. In dec. 2006 it was 200$. And atm its artificially low due to recycle of nuclear weapons.
Uranium mines are getting empty, new needs to be open. The estimate is we can make 300 times more, but at 10x the cost.
Must be alot of..."storage".In 2005...
• Supply from mines was 102.5 million pounds
• Demand was 171 million pounds
• The gap was 68.5 million pounds.
Holy crap...
Zero emissions. Same as everything else. Tho you do know cooling towers?
Unlimited..yes...but at a very very high price if demand keep going up.
Minimal land usage? No..you want large safety zones. You dont want to be a neighbour to one.
Safe? Highly radioactive materials aint safe. Just because it cant do a melt down doesnt mean it can expose alot of radiation and radioactive materials to the surroundings.
Self-sustaining? No. There is large goverment funding behind nuclear plants. Else they would build coal due to cheaper prices.
Environmentally safe. See safe, plus the waste disposal is...safe? I think not. And for solar panels and windmills etc you can recycle. With nuclear waste you need 40000 or so year storage somewhere. A nice present to future generations.
I could say alot better things about nuclear plants. But it would be none of the above if compared to renewable energy sources.
Last edited by Shintai; 08-02-2008 at 11:45 AM.
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what shintai said, just to add the actual uran production/consumption numbers:
as of 2007:
- 41.279 tons world wide production
- 64,615 tons required
most of the gap is filed by the scraping of nuclear warheads but they are limited.
new mines are comming online, but they cant keep up with the rising demand, now that everyone wants to build powerplants.
And even with the new reactor typs you have nuclear waste that has to be dealt with, as shintai mentioned.
True, but the point is that a fuel rod is considered depleted when only a portion of it's U235 has been split. If you reprocess, you get new fuel for the cost of reprocessing. Plus, less than 1% of uranium mined is U235 - what's used in normal reactors. The rest is U238 which can be transmuted into Plutonium 239 in a breeder reactor - and we have so much U238, we use it as artillery shells - that's what they're talking about when they say 'depleted uranium.'what shintai said, just to add the actual uran production/consumption numbers:
as of 2007:
- 41.279 tons world wide production
- 64,615 tons required
most of the gap is filed by the scraping of nuclear warheads but they are limited.
new mines are comming online, but they cant keep up with the rising demand, now that everyone wants to build powerplants.
And even with the new reactor typs you have nuclear waste that has to be dealt with, as shintai mentioned.
The problem with plutonium is that it is very toxic - chemically as well as from radioactivity. By comparison, enriched uranium is relatively safe - in the sense that you can handle it without dying immediately. However we've been using plutonium 239 for decades in weapons so it is possible for it to be handled safely.
Reprocessing eliminates some of the waste storage issue, but yes, there is definitely a lot of stuff that has to be disposed of. However it won't necessarily have to be stored for 10's of thousands of years unless you think that our technology will never advance. Transmutation of elements into other elements is scientific fact, not fiction. You can't argue that in 10 or 50 or 100 years we won't have the ability to go back and transmute radioactive waste easily and cheaply. We still don't have a good understanding of what is going on in quantum mechanics. If you doubt that, then explain how something can exist as both a particle and a wave simultaneously - because that what quantum mechanics requires you to believe. We just accept this as fact and move on, but it doesn't make any sense in human terms. Even Einstein labeled quantum 'teleportation' as 'spooky action at a distance.' And as for Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, he said that he refused to believe that god played dice with the universe.
Personally I would rather see wind and solar be used over nuclear, but I'm not going to make the argument that nuclear can't be done either because it's too dangerous or we don't have enough fuel, because that just isn't correct.
Here is a basic scientific issue with that idea. To transmute something so to say, guess how much energy you need. You need alot more than you got from your fission process. hence its not a viable solution. Unless you put your money on future technology to compensate for current waste.
If the world applied civic economics global warming and renewable energy wouldnt be a problem. We already today have all technologies. Even 10-20 years ago. But greed and stupidity is preventing it.
or in short. Instant gratification. Its like having to choose between a candy bar now. Or 10 candy bars in 1 years. And you choose the 1 candy bar now.
Last edited by Shintai; 08-02-2008 at 01:56 PM.
Crunching for Comrades and the Common good of the People.
19 here in France
from wiki.fr
I don't know how is power in other country, but there it's never power loss !!!
How is power in us ?
Yes and Germany didn't have to build another nuclear reactor due to the amount of solar panels used in their country. But hey lets poison the Earth right? Go play your banjo
Last edited by Glow9; 08-01-2008 at 01:29 AM.
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