Renewable Energy Research - Internet Flamewars
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Hundreds of birds are killed by wind turbines in the US each year.
All those turbines manage to only kill hundreds? A few cats can achieve the same thing.
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Wind Turbines Kill Around 300,000 Birds Annually, House Cats Around 3,000,000,000
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Cats and buildings are dramatically more deadly for birds than wind turbines.
And I have to copy the image in:
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It suggests that humanity is reaching a point in understanding where a workable design may be found fairly soon.
The only fusion power prediction that I believe:
(The timing varies a bit by game, but it's basically always ballpark 2050.)
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Whoa, Alien Swarm takes place in '52. Does that mean fusion power will cause space aliens to murder everyone?
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Yeah, well, whatever your video game comes up with, I'm sure that's reliable. Meanwhile, I'm dopey enough to go with this, somewhere between the pink zone and the line at the right:
General Fusion Roadmap targets 2018 for net energy gain | NextBigFuture.com
As with all nuclear fusion projects, General Fusion is planning on getting a lot of power scaling to achieve net gain and commercial fusion.
Hmm... no one box. So:
Whoa, Alien Swarm takes place in '52. Does that mean fusion power will cause space aliens to murder everyone?
According to New City Hearld that would be about right.
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I will have to come back to you tomorrow on this.
So here I am. I am not sure I have that much more to contribute with, though, except for a few points:
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The whole premise that "Nuclear is better than Coal". I don't see how this is an argument for nuclear, since I think we can agree that coal is like the worst thing possible. This comparison may have been a good one in the last century, but today the best alternative investment is not coal, so stop comparing with it.
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We have excellent salmon fishing in Sweden, despite the 64TWh of hydropower output. Not everyone builds dams like the Hoover dam. "Salmon stairs" are the norm, and not only the salmon uses them to migrate.
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There is the little "thing" of storing the spent fuel from the reactors of today. It takes 10000 years for it to come back to "normal" radation levels. This is still an Unsolved Problem (best prognosis is that by the year 2035 things will start to happen).
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Uranium is still a non-renewable resource. See my earlier comment about "best alternative investment". We should be spending our resources on making sure that the solar power joke, the microproduction jokes, the efficienfy of wind power, and a heap of other renewable energy sources are being developed.
To which the answer is, of course, that in order to stop consuming coal now we need to do something immediate. The investment cost per kW for a nuclear power plant is roughly twice that of a windmill (before regulations and subsidises), so you guess what is the better option.
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There is the little "thing" of storing the spent fuel from the reactors of today. It takes 10000 years for it to come back to "normal" radation levels. This is still an Unsolved Problem (best prognosis is that by the year 2035 things will start to happen).
The simplest way to handle this is actually to use more neutron irradiation: encourage the breakup of the troublesome long-lived stuff into things that are hotter but for a much shorter time. We might have problems building a 10,000 year repository, but a 100 year one isn't really a big deal.
Uranium is still a non-renewable resource.
Yeah, but the amount we've got available relative to the rate of use indicates that we ought to not worry about it. And uranium (U-235) is hardly the only fissionable nucleotide, nor even the most abundant.
The real problem with nuclear power as it is at the present is the same as it has always been: it's entanglement with weapon production.
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Point of reference: hydro isn't really a viable local solution for Phoenix.
Is nuclear? Don't you still need a lot of water to flow through a nuke plant?
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Don't you still need a lot of water to flow through a nuke plant?
Not compared to a hydro plant
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It depends on where you are. Southern Spain or the SW of the USA? Very sensible, as long as you use the right design, especially as power usage peaks when it is sunniest because of the impact of air conditioning systems.
We'll see. I'll believe it when it's been done and running. Not that I'm against trying. I just have what you might call a skeptical mind.
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I'll believe it when it's been done and running.
Been going for eight years now ;)
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The whole premise that "Nuclear is better than Coal". I don't see how this is an argument for nuclear, since I think we can agree that coal is like the worst thing possible.
Wood and animal dung for energy is orders of magnitude worse. I don't think coal is terrible. Like nukes, we know a lot about how to make it fairly clean.
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To which the answer is, of course, that in order to stop consuming coal now we need to do something immediate. The investment cost per kW for a nuclear power plant is roughly twice that of a windmill (before regulations and subsidises), so you guess what is the better option.
I'm all for research, but we're not in danger of running out of stuff like Uranium or coal. And when that stuff gets scarcer, the other stuff automatically becomes a better option, even if there are no future improvements.
Wind just doesn't seem scalable, and I'm skeptical about your figures comparing costs for the two sources (do they include the costs of the real estate?). As @blakeyrat said, they have other critical differences that make the comparisons somewhat meaningless.
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Not compared to a hydro plant
Well, duh. But this is Phoenix we're talking about. Ah, looks like they already use wastewater:
Due to its location in the Arizona desert, Palo Verde is the only nuclear generating facility in the world that is not located adjacent to a large body of above-ground water. The facility evaporates water from the treated sewage of several nearby municipalities to meet its cooling needs. 20 billion US gallons (76,000,000 m³) of treated water are evaporated each year.[9][10] This water represents about 25% of the annual overdraft of the Arizona Department of Water Resources Phoenix Active Management Area.[11] At the nuclear plant site, the wastewater is further treated and stored in an 80-acre (32 ha) reservoir for use in the plant's cooling towers.
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Been going for eight years now
So a short history. Cool. The article doesn't go into comparing how it's been doing compared with what they planned / hoped.
Of course, you can't get something like that built here in the Mojave due to tortoises and shit.
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tortoises and shit
I can understand not disturbing the tortoises, but surely they could move the shit!
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Hundreds of birds are killed by wind turbines in the US each year. Don't know about numbers elsewhere.
Wow.
Hundreds of birds?
IT'S ARMAGEDDON!
Fark had an article a couple days ago comparing the number of birds killed by wind power with the number killed by domestic cats. "Don't know the numbers" but the difference is orders of magnitude. (The cats won, of course.)
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How many birds does Blakeycat kill per year?
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The whole premise that "Nuclear is better than Coal". I don't see how this is an argument for nuclear, since I think we can agree that coal is like the worst thing possible. This comparison may have been a good one in the last century, but today the best alternative investment is not coal, so stop comparing with it.
Then what is it?
We have excellent salmon fishing in Sweden, despite the 64TWh of hydropower output. Not everyone builds dams like the Hoover dam. "Salmon stairs" are the norm, and not only the salmon uses them to migrate.
Yes; we use those too on dams too large or crucial to tear down.
There is the little "thing" of storing the spent fuel from the reactors of today. It takes 10000 years for it to come back to "normal" radation levels. This is still an Unsolved Problem (best prognosis is that by the year 2035 things will start to happen).
Ok? Even if you store the shit in a landfill, it's a hundred times better than burning coal where that shit all ends up in the atmosphere.
Things? What things? Could you possibly be more vague? Maybe use the word "things" a few more times?
Uranium is still a non-renewable resource. See my earlier comment about "best alternative investment". We should be spending our resources on making sure that the solar power joke, the microproduction jokes, the efficienfy of wind power, and a heap of other renewable energy sources are being developed.
Even without fuel reprocessing and assuming zero improvement in reactor efficiency, the supply is sufficient for at least 200 years.
To which the answer is, of course, that in order to stop consuming coal now we need to do something immediate. The investment cost per kW for a nuclear power plant is roughly twice that of a windmill (before regulations and subsidises), so you guess what is the better option.
WINDMILLS DO NOT PROVIDE BASE-LOAD. THEY CAN NOT FULFILL THE PURPOSE OF NUCLEAR PLANTS.
I've said that like 8 times. Goddamned you're stupid.
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Hundreds of birds?
It's more likely hundreds of thousands.
Fark had an article a couple days ago comparing the number of birds killed by wind power with the number killed by domestic cats. "Don't know the numbers" but the difference is orders of magnitude. (The cats won, of course.)
Sure, but the cats are killing small birds. The wind turbines kill things like eagles, who have much smaller numbers, etc. So I don't think you can simply compare the numbers.
(Picture h/t @FrostCat)
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It's more likely hundreds of thousands.
Yes; the joke is his ludicrously small number.
Guys! We should invest in automobile safety! There's DOZENS of car crashes a year!
The wind turbines kill things like eagles, who have much smaller numbers, etc. So I don't think you can simply compare the numbers.
Meh.
I still think it's mostly an argument used by NIMBYs. Either way you already know I'm for nuclear power which, if we built, would alleviate the need for any windmills. So I'm not sure what else you want from me.
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We'll see. I'll believe it when it's been done and running. Not that I'm against trying. I just have what you might call a skeptical mind.
I think that's quite fair. I don't think we've solved solar power yet, but I do think there are parts of the world where it makes a load of sense if it can be used. I just don't live in one of those myself. Round here, wind, wave and tidal power would make much more sense. (We've got the wrong rocks and topography for major hydro schemes, despite an abundance of rain.)
If you think wind and solar are not ready for prime time, try wave and tidal power; they're much more problematic…
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So I'm not sure what else you want from me.
I basically agree with your overall points, just pointing out more details on what's going on. And silly comparisons.
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If you think wind and solar are not ready for prime time, try wave and tidal power; they're much more problematic…
Totally agree. I think projects like the Spanish thing are great, because we'll probably learn a lot. People who think these technologies are silver bullets make me LOL.
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Hey according to Svahneberghshashdg you just need to install special sidewalk tiles and you get free energy from people walking on them!!!!!!!!! THOSE EUROPEANS ARE SO SMARYT
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You laugh, but it is an idea being taken seriously:
It'll probably never work for a baseload supply, but when you consider how busy city centres are, it could generate a decent amount.
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That's like saying the little solar collectors on portable signs or call boxes prove that solar is the future.
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Ah, but I'm not saying it's the future ;)
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You have to compress the gas in the cylinder.
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And you can't bury spent fuel under those solar panels?
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You laugh, but it is an idea being taken seriously:http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pavement-pounders-at-paris-marathon-generate-power/
No it's not.
It'll probably never work for a baseload supply, but when you consider how busy city centres are, it could generate a decent amount.
It'll never work well enough to make installation of the system worthwhile, not by orders of magnitude.
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I don't think the set of places where solar generators make sense overlaps with the set of suitable places to bury radioactive waste
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It'll never work well enough to make installation of the system worthwhile, not by orders of magnitude.
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it; it'll probably never work for a baseload supply, but it could be good enough for street lighting. Where it's busy, anyway.
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I don't think the set of places where solar generators make sense overlaps with the set of suitable places to bury radioactive waste
Why not? Middle of nowhere desert sounds decent for both.
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I was thinking less in terms of location, more in terms of suitability for containment
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I don't think the set of places where solar generators make sense overlaps with the set of suitable places to bury radioactive waste
They're both at a large swath of land that's not being used?
suitability for containment
A giant concrete inclosure isn't sufficient?
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Like I said above,
@RaceProUK said:I was thinking less in terms of location, more in terms of suitability for containment
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I was thinking less in terms of location, more in terms of suitability for containment
But not thinking very hard? At least not in terms of places with a log of geography.
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You have to compress the gas in the cylinder.
I mean for storage purposes. You can't store hydrogen as a gas (and maintain any worthwhile energy density), you need to store it as a liquid. Which means large, well-insulated, well-armored tanks. You also need a system to siphon out of the tank fast enough to keep the engine running but slow enough so the entire drive-train doesn't turn into a cryogenically frozen mess.
It's nothing we can't design a car around, but it's not nearly as simple as a gas (petrol) tank and pump.
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keep the engine running
You could run an ICE on hydrogen, but it's more likely to be used for fuel cells
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Ok?
That doesn't change anything I said about the difficulty of storing it on a moving vehicle that could potentially hit another moving vehicle at high speeds. The fuel cell doesn't magically make the hydrogen tank disappear.
But thanks for being a pedantic dickweed.
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But thanks for being a pedantic dickweed.
You're welcome ;)Using a fuel cell can help with the issue though; combine it with wheelhub motors, and now you have a nice big gap where the engine used to be. Or, to put it another way, an excellent place to put a hydrogen tank. And now you have a bigger boot/trunk possibly. More interior space, anyway.
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I never understood the hate about windmills being noisy, we had a ton of them in the area where I grew up and never once did I even notice a sound.
What I did notice though was the average windmill was offline about two out of every three months for maintenance and repairs...
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I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it; it'll probably never work for a baseload supply, but it could be good enough for street lighting. Where it's busy, anyway.
Really, no. You underestimate just how much power it takes to run a streetlight, how difficult it is to recover low-intensity power in the first place, and if that power is coming from people just walking about, it's going to make walking around in that area much more difficult. Which will strongly act to discourage people from walking around there.
In short, it won't work, and if it did, it still wouldn't work.
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You underestimate just how much power it takes to run a streetlight
Depends what the lighting is; if it's LED lighting, the power demands will obviously be a lot lower than with those sodium lights.
The rest are all good points though.
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Solar freakin' roadways!
PS10 solar power plant - Wikipedia
