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It's the End of the World: Climate Collapse


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Solar is a pipe dream anyway.

Leaving the Simpsons aside the rest of the way, 50 yrs is way very under, even not assuming Thorium gets used.  One could argue that using nuclear power now makes the far future Earth less radioactive, as less U238 (I think) would be around to decay naturally!  And no CO2.

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I think that Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima (not to mention that weird radiation leak over Russia last year) have, combined, killed a lot of the arguments in favour of nuclear as a green energy source. Fukushima almost irradiated the Pacific and cleaning it up will take fifty years and cost trillions of dollars. It's just not remotely worth the risk. The new nuclear power station in the UK is also eye-wateringly expensive and will be a net drain on the taxpayer (as the cost of the energy remains fixed even as renewables drop the cost of energy ever lower).

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The answer to our future energy needs is fairly easy to figure out. We need a combination of wind, solar, geothermal and wave technologies to generate energy that can be stored in national energy grid, that way you can place each option where it makes the most sense. Problem is, not only is there no political will for this with Republicans, they’re actively fighting these measures.

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1 hour ago, Werthead said:

I think that Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima (not to mention that weird radiation leak over Russia last year) have, combined, killed a lot of the arguments in favour of nuclear as a green energy source. Fukushima almost irradiated the Pacific and cleaning it up will take fifty years and cost trillions of dollars. It's just not remotely worth the risk. The new nuclear power station in the UK is also eye-wateringly expensive and will be a net drain on the taxpayer (as the cost of the energy remains fixed even as renewables drop the cost of energy ever lower).

I don't know "The worst nuclear disasters in history have done almost nothing compared to the normal operating cost of coal and oil fired power plants" doesn't seem like a very good argument against nuclear to me but YMMV.

On the other hand "renewables are cheaper and more effective" is a pretty damn good argument.

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1 hour ago, TrueMetis said:

I don't know "The worst nuclear disasters in history have done almost nothing compared to the normal operating cost of coal and oil fired power plants" doesn't seem like a very good argument against nuclear to me but YMMV.

On the other hand "renewables are cheaper and more effective" is a pretty damn good argument.

Almost nothing?  I don't know about that, Fukishima was and is a major disaster.  It's easy to understand why someone might not want to be in close proximity to a nuclear plant or be wary of going nuclear globally.  Disasters are few and far between but when they happen it's a big deal and seriously fucks up the environment/  The effects can be pretty far reaching and locally you're screwed for generations.  I mean CO2 might be the greater of two evils right now, particularly in terms of scale, but there's more than one way to poison the planet.  I'm not against nuclear as part of a mixed energy plan to gradually wean us from CO2, but I wouldn't want it to be THE solution.

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In other news, I read earlier today that somewhere in Russia, the thermomenter has hit  -86 degrees Farenheit. Yep, MINUS 86 degrees.  I don't know what that is in Celsius,  but in winter I've only heard of cold snaps around -40 to -50 there. 

Snow in Tallahassee...21 degrees F in New Orleans? We've had cold winters but it seems to be global this year. We're not at The Day After Tomorrow yet, :) but it's fun to speculate while sitting at your computer with a nice mug of hot chocolate. So folks, how is this winter treating you? 

 

Aside from that week of -20-30 F wind chill during the holiday week, nothing out of the ordinary. (Which in my part of the woods is not unheard of, but a cold snap like that is usually a couple days long rather than over a week.)

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3 hours ago, S John said:

Almost nothing?  I don't know about that, Fukishima was and is a major disaster.  It's easy to understand why someone might not want to be in close proximity to a nuclear plant or be wary of going nuclear globally.  Disasters are few and far between but when they happen it's a big deal and seriously fucks up the environment/  The effects can be pretty far reaching and locally you're screwed for generations.  I mean CO2 might be the greater of two evils right now, particularly in terms of scale, but there's more than one way to poison the planet.  I'm not against nuclear as part of a mixed energy plan to gradually wean us from CO2, but I wouldn't want it to be THE solution.

Disagree, the earthquake itself which destroyed or damaged hundred of thousands of buildings and killed 10000+ people was a major disaster. Fukushima itself which killed nobody so far and might lead to a handful of cancer incidents in the future was a minor incident. That many people won't be able to return home is terrible but still not in major disaster level unlike say, Puerto Rico.

So yeah, Puerto Rico was and still is a major disaster. The Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami were major disasters. Fukushima itself is a minor incident. Coal kills 100,000 per year per trillionkWhr, Nuclear kills 90. Which is less than every other form of power generation. Yeah even solar and wind kill more people a year, and they make up a fraction of what Nuclear generates. And all of these numbers could be reduced with better regulation.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#5551a55c709b

Again there are arguments against nuclear but "it's dangerous" isn't one of them.

2 hours ago, Lady Of The Crossbow Inn said:

In other news, I read earlier today that somewhere in Russia, the thermomenter has hit  -86 degrees Farenheit. Yep, MINUS 86 degrees.  I don't know what that is in Celsius,  but in winter I've only heard of cold snaps around -40 to -50 there. 

Snow in Tallahassee...21 degrees F in New Orleans? We've had cold winters but it seems to be global this year. We're not at The Day After Tomorrow yet, :) but it's fun to speculate while sitting at your computer with a nice mug of hot chocolate. So folks, how is this winter treating you? 

 

Aside from that week of -20-30 F wind chill during the holiday week, nothing out of the ordinary. (Which in my part of the woods is not unheard of, but a cold snap like that is usually a couple days long rather than over a week.)

Does it? Temp maps I've seen have indicated the exact opposite. With much of the planet being significantly hotter than average. Now this could have changed in the past few weeks but I'd be surprised if we got anything lower than average temps for January despite a few cold snaps.

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I can't think of ways in which nuclear power is better than renewable energy sources - cost, effectiveness, accessibility (tech barrier), pollution. 

 

Fossil fuel is so completely woven into our civilization that it isn't realistic to expect one source will replace it all by itself. We will continue to have fossil fuels. But if we're lucky, we can reduce our reliance on it from 95%+ to say, 50%, and use combinations of renewables to make up the difference. If we can reduce carbon emissions by that much, I suspect we will have made a great effort to curb the damage of human activities on our weather system. 

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2 hours ago, S John said:

Almost nothing?  I don't know about that, Fukishima was and is a major disaster.  It's easy to understand why someone might not want to be in close proximity to a nuclear plant or be wary of going nuclear globally.  Disasters are few and far between but when they happen it's a big deal and seriously fucks up the environment/  The effects can be pretty far reaching and locally you're screwed for generations.  I mean CO2 might be the greater of two evils right now, particularly in terms of scale, but there's more than one way to poison the planet.  I'm not against nuclear as part of a mixed energy plan to gradually wean us from CO2, but I wouldn't want it to be THE solution.

I'm pretty sure that even taking into account all the major nuclear disasters, the environmental damage and the lives lost from nuclear power generation is still way less than the damage and loss of life from fossil fuel electricity production, on a per kW basis.

One of the problems with the bad press of the nuclear accidents is that there is no political or financial will for investing in research for making nuclear power even safer, more cost effective and how to deal with the nuclear waste aspect.

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2 hours ago, Lady Of The Crossbow Inn said:

In other news, I read earlier today that somewhere in Russia, the thermomenter has hit  -86 degrees Farenheit. Yep, MINUS 86 degrees.  I don't know what that is in Celsius,  but in winter I've only heard of cold snaps around -40 to -50 there. 

Snow in Tallahassee...21 degrees F in New Orleans? We've had cold winters but it seems to be global this year. We're not at The Day After Tomorrow yet, :) but it's fun to speculate while sitting at your computer with a nice mug of hot chocolate. So folks, how is this winter treating you? 

 

Aside from that week of -20-30 F wind chill during the holiday week, nothing out of the ordinary. (Which in my part of the woods is not unheard of, but a cold snap like that is usually a couple days long rather than over a week.)

There was a ~2 week cold front here near the end of December into the beginning of January (as I recall) that was particularly cold for that early in the year, but other than that period, it has on the whole been warmer from the fall and into the winter. 

Southern Wisconsin, here. 

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Nuclear will get rolled out en masse if we reach a point where we are desperately trying to get emissions down as quick as possible, assuming we can't do it with solar/wind/tidal (hydro is great but there's not a lot more opportunities to do it without massive environmental damage, and geothermal is really location-specific (although you could rectify that with a better national power grid and good long-distance transmission lines). Until then, it's pretty unlikely we'll see a mass roll-out of nuclear plants. 

But who knows? Maybe someone will finally figure out how to scale up nuclear fusion in the next five years, and we'll have that. It has its own issues with radioactive waste (you have to replace the reactor casing every so often), but at least that only requires that you dump it in a pool or some other shielding for a couple of decades. 

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11 hours ago, Fall Bass said:

Nuclear will get rolled out en masse if we reach a point where we are desperately trying to get emissions down as quick as possible, assuming we can't do it with solar/wind/tidal (hydro is great but there's not a lot more opportunities to do it without massive environmental damage, and geothermal is really location-specific (although you could rectify that with a better national power grid and good long-distance transmission lines). Until then, it's pretty unlikely we'll see a mass roll-out of nuclear plants. 

But who knows? Maybe someone will finally figure out how to scale up nuclear fusion in the next five years, and we'll have that. It has its own issues with radioactive waste (you have to replace the reactor casing every so often), but at least that only requires that you dump it in a pool or some other shielding for a couple of decades. 

And that is probably the worst set of circumstances for safely rolling out nuclear. "We need a non-GHG energy solution FAST, guys and gals."

"Hey, lets build a bunch of nuclear power stations."

"OMG that's going to cost shitloads!"

"Don't worry, I know a guy, he'll take care of it at a very reasonable price."

"Cool, when can he start?"

Nuclear power needs to be part of a well thought out, well planned, and well implemented global energy strategy.

The issue I see with "renewables" is that all the ones we use now take up a lot of space. Solar arrays, wind farms, these are not environmentally benign. Hydro-power stations require you to build dams, flood valleys, change the water flow of the river downstream of the dam. They might be low GHG, but they are not no-impact. And all these methods need to be placed in a location where they will efficiently generate power, i.e. where there is a decent amount of sunshine throughout the year, where there is consistent wind within a certain range throughout the year, where there is a decent flow of water and geographically and geologically appropriate conditions to build a dam.

And then we have tidal energy ideas. Have we started to think about the unintended consequences of building tidal power plants, or are people assuming they will have negligible effect? We often seem to get into a new technology thinking any negative effects will be negligible, but that turns out to be wrong a lot of the time, possibly even most of the time.

We already know, and to some extent are irrationally afraid of the negative effects of nuclear power. If people became more rational about the downsides of nuclear, it could become a valuable part of dealing with climate change.

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On ‎1‎/‎17‎/‎2018 at 6:04 PM, TerraPrime said:

I can't think of ways in which nuclear power is better than renewable energy sources - cost, effectiveness, accessibility (tech barrier), pollution. 

 

Even apart from arguing a few of those points, nuclear power is way more reliable than wind and solar, and way less location dependent than hydro or geothermal or wind or solar.  You can do windmills around the edges but right now when there's peak electric demand, we're firing up the coal plants.  A lot better to just crank up the reactor when demand peaks.

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4 hours ago, mcbigski said:

Even apart from arguing a few of those points, nuclear power is way more reliable than wind and solar, and way less location dependent than hydro or geothermal or wind or solar.  You can do windmills around the edges but right now when there's peak electric demand, we're firing up the coal plants.  A lot better to just crank up the reactor when demand peaks.

That's not really possible. Once a reactor is going it really only has one output. You can bring more reactors on or turn them off, though this isn't really possible at all with nuclear, but that takes a lot of time and often peaks and troughs go too fast so that this doesn't work. Now you could set up the turbine so it could disconnect, and this is actually something a lot of wind turbines do, but I'm not really a fan of having a traditional plant running while generating no energy. If you made wind turbines to handle peaks and troughs though, that would work and we wouldn't be producing waste for no reason.

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1 hour ago, mcbigski said:

Even apart from arguing a few of those points, nuclear power is way more reliable than wind and solar, and way less location dependent than hydro or geothermal or wind or solar.  You can do windmills around the edges but right now when there's peak electric demand, we're firing up the coal plants.  A lot better to just crank up the reactor when demand peaks.

Storage via batteries (a la Tesla in Australia) and/or storing solar power via molten salt towers/reservoirs can also mitigate the need for on demand power surges. There are some interesting technologies that are already working and will only be improving in quality and cost.

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Fukushima itself which killed nobody so far and might lead to a handful of cancer incidents in the future was a minor incident. 

 

It was not a "minor incident" and it is grossly misleading to say so.

Fukushima, like Chernobyl before it, was a major disaster. It blew the top off the International Nuclear Event Scale. Unlike Chernobyl, it didn't kill anyone in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, but that was down to extraordinary good luck and the fact that the Japanese had better immediate safety standards (and a less cavalier attitude to safety) than the Soviet-occupied Ukraine, which is not exactly a high bar to climb. It still caused three meltdowns, blew the roof off one of the reactor building (injuring eleven people in the process) and triggered the evacuation of tens of thousands of people. The most ludicrously optimistic timescale for cleaning up the site, given that they don't know how to do it and their plans are based on technology that does not yet exist, is somewhere in the mid-2050s.

The current situation - because the incident is certainly not over - is still dubious: we still don't actually know the full extent of what happened or the damage caused. We do know that the situation is not contained. Radioactive water is seeping into the groundwater, the Japanese admitting their "giant ice wall" plans to stop the two mingling have been less effective than hoped. They spent years removing the intact fuel rods, a task compared to pulling cigarettes out of a packet that's been sat on. By an elephant. Some of the rods were bent, to make the task especially challenging. Breaking the rods mid-process would have triggered a catastrophic atmospheric radiation leak which would have been disastrous, but they managed to pull it off. Well, they managed to move the fuel rods to pools and tanks just outside the buildings, so they're still on the same site (which seems unwise but okay). Unfortunately, they can't remove the nuclear waste and melted fuel rods from the reactors themselves, as the radiation is so strong it will instantly kill any human being who goes near them. Even robots can only survive for a few seconds in the actual reactor area before their electronics are fried. The current best guess (!) is that the nuclear waste has burned through the floors of all three chambers and is now being held at bay from mingling with the underlying soil by about one foot of concrete. Some indications are that they are actually eating through the concrete, so that's fun. At the moment it will be a year before they have a robot even vaguely capable of surviving the radiation long enough to start properly assessing the fuel situation, and they don't know what the fuck to do about it afterwards.

Apparently Japan is considering saying "fuck it" and just leaving the spent fuel where it is and hoping for the best, because the difficulties in removing it are simply beyond human technological capabilities at present.

The cost of the clean-up operation is also comfortably in the trillions, causing immense economic damage to the country which goes far beyond any benefits from the electricity generated.

Quote

 

Even apart from arguing a few of those points, nuclear power is way more reliable than wind and solar, and way less location dependent than hydro or geothermal or wind or solar.

 

We know now that nuclear power plants should not be placed close to the ocean, not in any area which is even vaguely in danger of suffering an earthquake and should not be placed closed to inhabited areas, as an evacuation in case of an emergency could be deadlier than the accident (as was the case at Fukushima).

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51 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

In other sad news, water saving in some parts of Germany has reached a level, where pipes are clogging because there's simply not enough water running through the pipes to flush the excrements and other waste. Which means that bacteria are spreading and communities have to flush their sewage systems in regular intervals.

It's a simple market mechanism that has turned into a vicious circle: Because water usage is priced by the liter, water saving means saving money. But because many of the infrastructure costs are fixed, the prices have to go up as consumption goes down. Which in turn increases the financial incentive for even more water-saving.

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On 17/01/2018 at 1:38 AM, mcbigski said:

Solar is a pipe dream anyway.

9.5 square mile solar farm in California powers 180,000 homes so about 500,000 people, not so much a pipe dream as continually denied reality that needs to happen.  Big Oil's control of government needs addressing, but it is a handy tool for the rich rightwing including fake liberals.

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