Our biggest challenge? Lack of imagination.

[Brian Roth]

Just a quick comment.  Wind power is plentiful, yet sometimes the wind doesn't blow.  Solar advancements are also amazing **see footnote**

What is lacking is a way to store megawatts of power from wind and solar for those cloudy, windless days.  I don't think a bunch of NiCads are up to the task.  <g>

Bri

**footnote**  Activists are complaining/screaming about birds killed by the huge wind turbines' blades, or birds being fried by the latest solar farms which use multiple mirrors focused at a central point..

 

[gyraf]

..the bird-killing-argument is most often a strawman sponsored by traditional power..

 

[living sounds]

I have not seen a definitive proof that climate change is actually an existential threat... while that fear mongering seems to resonate with young people.

I heard cost estimates of the reduction to world GDP if we do nothing about climate change and it was low single digit maybe out a century from now... While the reduced economic growth from making energy more expensive now will dramatically reduce the standard of living for most people here and now (already is).

Higher energy costs will hurt poor people far more than wealthy.

This "existential threat" is promoted using a fast thinking/slow thinking trick... The global temperature is rising, which is an undeniable fact which leads people to accept the conflated (but unsubstantiated) associated claim that climate change is a man made world ending threat, without ever investigating that claim rigorously ("slowly"). We can do a lot to mitigate a few degree change spread out over a century. I can't even begin to imagine the technology we will have available to us a century from today.

JR

PS: I understand the green new deal has been reframed as "infrastructure" spending.

It's the scientific consensus - time to get over it.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

It's the scientific consensus - time to get over it.

However, a significant fraction of ecologists is deliberately claiming risks that scientifically don't have the impact they assert.
Each side, climate skeptics and ecologists, both have recourse to strawmen.
100% nuclear or 100% renewable is not a viable proposition for the near future, and I would think there'll be fossil energy for some time still.

 

[JohnRoberts]

It's the scientific consensus - time to get over it.

Science is not a vote, but fact based...  The scientific consensus once thought the world was flat, the earth was the center of the universe, etc, etc.

I already explained how this is sold... Temp rising is a fact, so don't question the rest of the program, which mainly boils down to a massive wealth transfer.

I am even OK with wealth transfers, we already do a lot of that, just don't try to fool us by saying we are saving the world, and hurting poor people in the process.

JR

 

[user 37518]

We have discussed nuclear extensively before. Marketing had promoted nuclear as 'fast, cheap and clean'. -- Well, when factoring in all costs and all side effects, then nuclear has turned out to be not as 'clean'  by far as had been promised and it is most likely also not that 'cheap' after all, at least when factoring in all side effects and long-term costs. However, nuclear is FAST energy and a LOT of it NOW -- and therefore not so easy to do without for some.

Not as clean why? you could argue a nuclear disaster but as I've said, new nuclear reactors are much smaller, easier to manage and less likely to create a disaster, the only real nuclear disaster due to the reactor itself is Chernobyl, it was in fact a failure of design in the reactor, Fukushima is a different story, it was a Tsunami the one that produced it, I've seen documentaries, and they say that it was in fact the water blocking wall that was not high enough, so it was a lack of design not in the reactor itself but in the protection against weather. Not cheap, why? If you take into account the amount of Megawatts produced VS investment, I would say it is the cheapest of them all.

 

[user 37518]

What is lacking is a way to store megawatts of power from wind and solar for those cloudy, windless days.  I don't think a bunch of NiCads are up to the task.  <g>

Bri

I advice anyone to watch the documentary "Who killed the electric car?", in it, a scientist described that he invented a new type of battery capable of storing huge amounts of charge, Texaco bought the patent for the battery and buried it. This was of course meant to be used for electric car applications, but there is no reason to argue that it could not be extended to be used for solar or wind storage.

 

[living sounds]

However, a significant fraction of ecologists is deliberately claiming risks that scientifically don't have the impact they assert.
Each side, climate skeptics and ecologists, both have recourse to strawmen.
100% nuclear or 100% renewable is not a viable proposition for the near future, and I would think there'll be fossil energy for some time still.

Even Greta Thunberg is in favour of a mix that includes nuclear. I'm talking about the reality based scientific community, not some eco hippies.

The risks of uncontrollable positive feedback loops (permafrost thawing, greenland/arctic/antarctic ice melting, irreverisble desertification, acidifying of oceans etc.) that permanently damage the ecosystem unfortunately are not insignificant.

 

[cyrano]

Not as clean why? you could argue a nuclear disaster but as I've said, new nuclear reactors are much smaller, easier to manage and less likely to create a disaster, the only real nuclear disaster due to the reactor itself is Chernobyl, it was in fact a failure of design in the reactor, Fukushima is a different story, it was a Tsunami the one that produced it, I've seen documentaries, and they say that it was in fact the water blocking wall that was not high enough, so it was a lack of design not in the reactor itself but in the protection against weather. Not cheap, why? If you take into account the amount of Megawatts produced VS investment, I would say it is the cheapest of them all.

Making reactors smaller doesn't make them safer. It just makes the disaster after a mishap somewhat less spread. As reactors become smaller, there'll be a lot more of them, augmenting the chance of a mishap.

If the Japanese who are world leaders in earthquake-proof buildings, can't foresee a force of nature too strong for their defences, who can?

The battery problem will be solved. Just yesterday, there was news on Popular Mechanics about a new battery:

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/amp35902755/structural-battery-massless-energy-storage/

I'll admit it's scarce on detail, but there are other groups working on the problem too. Ans omsetimes, we need to be creative. Somewhere, someone hooked up an unused train to store energy. The renewable energy source pulls the train uo the mountain, and when it rolls back down it produces energy. Similar things can be done with water, or even flywheels.

Our energy problem won't be solved by one technology.

The main problem is that capital is centric. Renewable energy is a problem that can only be solved in a decentralised manner. Unfortunately, a lot of the research in small-scale solutions resides in the DIY sphere. Not on this forum, tho...

We have to stop transporting everything (energy, food, ourselves...) over large distances to find the beginning of a solution.

 

[user 37518]

Making reactors smaller doesn't make them safer. It just makes the disaster after a mishap somewhat less spread. As reactors become smaller, there'll be a lot more of them, augmenting the chance of a mishap.

Actually no, that is not true, making smaller reactors makes them easier to cool down, which in both nuclear disasters (Chernobyl and Fukushima) that was the cause of the meltdown, not being able to cool down or inject enough water to cool down the reactor was the problem, making it smaller also makes it easier to control the reaction, and also makes the disaster as you mention, less catastrophic, but also easier to contain the disaster, the main problem they are having now with Fukushima is cooling the reactor, storing the polluted water and also preventing the ocean water to make contact with the reactor and thus poluting the oceanic water, Japan has said that they no longer have the capability of storing the water so they will have to dump it into the ocean.

Making a smaller reactor is not just about making a smaller disaster, its about control, you can isolate it more effectively, cool it much more easier, control the reaction much more easier, and in case of a mishappen it will be easier to control it. Its like comparing a train to a car, stopping a train takes much more power and its a lot more difficult, also takes longer than stopping a car, without taking into account that the disaster of a car crash is much smaller than a train crash.

If the Japanese who are world leaders in earthquake-proof buildings, can't foresee a force of nature too strong for their defences, who can?

I disagree, it was an evident error from the Japanese, Japan is an island, its prone to earthquakes and the past has shown the possibility of Tsunamies, they should've predicted that possibility specially if the plant was directly open to the ocean. Even the twin towers WTC designers took into account the possibility of an airplane hitting them, which gives some 9/11 deniers more arguments.

Even Greta Thunberg is in favour of a mix that includes nuclear. I'm talking about the reality based scientific community, not some eco hippies.

Yes I believe that a mix is the best way to go, with predominance on nuclear, however, I wouldn't rely much on Greta Thunberg, she is smart and good spirited, but she basically stopped potty training 5 years ago, I am being sarcastic of course... However I must add that it intrigues me that you dismmiss someone like Freeman Dyson so easily claiming that he is not a climatologist, but take the word of a 18 year old girl without any formal qualifications as an authority. Is she even in college yet?

 

[Matador]

...making smaller reactors makes them easier to cool down...
...making it smaller also makes it easier to control the reaction...
...makes the disaster as you mention, less catastrophic...
...easier to contain the disaster...
...you can isolate it more effectively...
...cool it much more easier...
...control the reaction much more easier...
...it will be easier to control it...

Do you have a primary source for any of these claims?

 

[scott2000]

Making a smaller reactor is not just about making a smaller disaster, its about control, you can isolate it more effectively, cool it much more easier, control the reaction much more easier, and in case of a mishappen it will be easier to control it.

I had a buddy talk about this with me in the not too distant past when France was rioting over gas.. He seemed to think smaller nuclear reactors were the best option. But being cooped up in a nuclear submarine while in the Navy may have messed up his thinking..lol

They still use those things?

 

[user 37518]

Do you have a primary source for any of these claims?

its not that difficult, just did a google search

https://www.energy.gov/ne/benefits-small-modular-reactors-smrs#:~:text=SMRs%20provide%20simplicity%20of%20design,as%20demand%20for%20energy%20increases.

SMR designs have the distinct advantage of factoring in current safeguards and security requirements. Facility protection systems, including barriers that can withstand design basis aircraft crash scenarios and other specific threats, are part of the engineering process being applied to new SMR design.  SMRs also provide safety and potential nonproliferation benefits to the United States and the wider international community.  Most SMRs will be built below grade for safety and security enhancements, addressing vulnerabilities to both sabotage and natural phenomena hazard scenarios. Some SMRs will be designed to operate for extended periods without refueling. These SMRs could be fabricated and fueled in a factory, sealed and transported to sites for power generation or process heat, and then returned to the factory for defueling at the end of the life cycle. This approach could help to minimize the transportation and handling of nuclear material.  Light water-based SMRs are expected to be fueled with low enriched uranium, i.e., approximately 5 percent U-235, similar to existing large nuclear power plants. The “security by design” concepts being applied to these technologies are expected to increase SMR resistance to theft and diversion of nuclear material. Also, reactor cores for these light water SMRs can be designed to burn plutonium as a mixed oxide (MOX) fuel. Further, SMRs based on non-light water reactor coolants could be more effective at dispositioning plutonium while minimizing the wastes requiring disposal.

https://eciu.net/analysis/briefings/uk-energy-policies-and-prices/small-modular-nuclear-reactors

Advantages of SMRs

SMRs have the following potential advantages when compared with large nuclear stations:

-Lower absolute capital cost, potentially easing the path for investors
-Reduced construction risk via off-site factory production and standardisation of components and systems
-Shorter construction and installation times
-Lower cooling requirements, potentially allowing installation on inland sites
-Reduced investment in the transmission network (as they could be deployed in a more dispersed pattern)
Easier to decommission
-Design of safety features made easier by smaller reactors, since less heat would need to be dissipated in the case of emergency
-Reduced refuelling needs, with some plants anticipated to operate for 30 years without replenishment of uranium
-In addition to generating electricity, the size of SMRs makes them attractive to more bespoke applications such as water desalination.
-Some SMR designs potentially offer significant safety advantages in that they are literally ‘fail-safe’; if all safety processes failed, the reactors would turn themselves off with no potential for release of radioactive substances. However, other designs are close cousins of existing large reactors such as Pressurised Water Reactors (PWRs), and do not have this ‘fail-safe’ characteristic.

https://www.foronuclear.org/en/updates/in-depth/characteristics-and-advantages-of-smr/

They also present a high level of inherent safety, since they use passive safety factors based on natural phenomena such as circulating the coolant using gravity or heat transmission with convection. This facilitates indefinite refrigeration without the need for any action from the operator, and without depending on external feeding or external water replacement.

https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Safety-And-Security-Advantages-Of-Small-Nuclear-Reactors.html

They are smaller, so the amount of radioactivity contained in each reactor is less. So much less in fact, that even if the worse case reactor accident occurs, the amount of radioactive material released would not pose a risk to the public. In nuclear lingo we say SMRs have a smaller “source term.” This source term is so small we can design the plant and emergency systems to virtually eliminate the need for emergency actions beyond the physical site boundaries. Then, by controlling access to the site boundary, we can eliminate the need for off-site protective actions (like sheltering or evacuations).

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph240/tan2/

SMRs offer several benefits over traditional large nuclear reactors. Because they are mainly fabricated in a factory environment before being shipped to the point of use, SMRs require limited on-site preparation and can greatly reduce the lengthly construction times of larger units. They also offer simplicity of design, enhanced safety features, and the superior quality afforded by factory production. For example, the Westinghouse small modular reactor is designed to shut down automatically and keep itself cool without human intervention, making it about 100 times safer than existing nuclear plants. [5]

SMRs require significantly lower capital costs due to their smaller size. Nuclear reactors that generate over 1000 MWe of power can cost more than $10 billion to construct, compared to SMRs that are expected to cost a few billion dollars. [6]

SMRs can be deployed in areas that lack the infrastructure to support a larger plant, or that do not require the energy generation of a larger plant. This allows smaller electrical markets, isolated areas, and sites with limited land and water resources access to nuclear power. A large nuclear plant requires an emergency planning zone that extends 10 miles around the plant, whereas a SMR may require a zone as small as half a mile around it. [6]

SMRs can be added incrementally to load centers as demand increases to match supply with demand. Another advantage of having multiple small reactors is that other reactors can stay online when one needs to go off-line for refueling, allowing for power to be generated continuously whereas for a conventional plant, the entire plant has to go offline for refueling. [7]

SMRs also provide safety benefits due to their nonproliferation nature. Most SMRs are built below grade for security purposes, hence minimizing the risks of sabotage or hazards that may arise due to natural disasters.

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Viewpoint-The-advantages-of-Small-Modular-Reactors

A third advantage is that SMRs have smaller emergency planning zones (EPZs), which is the area expected to be affected by a nuclear accident that results in the release of radioactive material. Large nuclear reactors have a ‘plume exposure pathway’ EPZ, which is about ten miles, and a larger ‘ingestion exposure pathway’ EPZ, which, depending on the country, is typically about 50 miles from the site. The ingestion exposure pathway represents the area where radioactive materials could be ingested through contaminated water of food.

https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/small-nuclear-power-reactors.aspx

Ability to remove reactor module or in-situ decommissioning at the end of the lifetime.

I think those are enough, if you want to learn more, I encourage you to Google yourself.

 

[living sounds]

Science is not a vote, but fact based...  The scientific consensus once thought the world was flat, the earth was the center of the universe, etc, etc.

Again, not true. Scholars in ancient Greece were well aware that the earth must be spherical and this was overwhelmingly accepted among them during the middle ages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth

The scientific method is only a few hundred years old, so it's a non sequitor (to say the least) to invoke a "scientific consensus" for pre-scientific times.

To be blunt, denying anthropogenic climate change today is orders of magnitude more stupid and immature than medieval people denying heliocentrism and the spherical earth, because science and technology are so much more advanced, the means of information (at least in principle) are so much improved and the political systems (at least in western democracies) are designed to allow for a scientific consensus to emerge based on fact rather than fiction.

You can still choose to follow the religion of eternal economic growth in a finite world. But be prepared that history will not remember you kindly.

 

[living sounds]

I advice anyone to watch the documentary "Who killed the electric car?", in it, a scientist described that he invented a new type of battery capable of storing huge amounts of charge, Texaco bought the patent for the battery and buried it.

Do you have a link to a credible news source to back up that story?

 

[living sounds]

However I must add that it intrigues me that you dismmiss someone like Freeman Dyson so easily claiming that he is not a climatologist, but take the word of a 18 year old girl without any formal qualifications as an authority. Is she even in college yet?

As I explained before, it is a question of methodology, not belief. She is following the experts who follow the facts. They determine the best course of action.

Dyson, when he was way out of his field, following his biasesrather than facts used inferior methodology. This can even happen to Nobel laureates - who just like other experts can fall into the intelligence trap.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I advice anyone to watch the documentary "Who killed the electric car?", in it, a scientist described that he invented a new type of battery capable of storing huge amounts of charge, Texaco bought the patent for the battery and buried it. This was of course meant to be used for electric car applications, but there is no reason to argue that it could not be extended to be used for solar or wind storage.

Even if an oil company bought the patent, there would still be a record of it in the patent office. They can't disappear an issued patent. 

This story smells like BS...

JR

 

[user 37518]

The scientific method is only a few hundred years old, so it's a non sequitor (to say the least) to invoke a "scientific consensus" for pre-scientific times.

I'll tell you something, from all these years that I've been an academic, I've found that there is this misconception that the scientific method and science in general is infalible, it is not, it only serves as a way to prove a certain theory or explain something, it doesn't mean that it is the truth or that its infalible or even that it is universal, let me give you an example, the scientific method proved Newton's law of gravity, it proved it, years later it turned out that Newton's law of gravity wasn't entirely correct, it was a special case of Einstein's theory of general relativity, does that mean that Newton's law is not useful? no, Newton's law of gravity is what took the first rocket to the moon, but in the bigger picture there is a bigger truth and that is Einstein's theory of relativity.

There is this famous paper by lord Kelvin in the 1800's which was titled something like "The dark clouds of physics", in it, Kelvin argued that the human race had already figured out in its entirety how physics work, we had Netwon's laws, Maxwell Equations, the laws of thermodynamics, etc... with the exception of 2 things, which he calls the 2 dark clouds of physics, he mentions something like once these 2 dark clouds are resolved, everything would be known. The 2 dark clouds were the following: The ultraviolet catastrophe and the Michelson Moorley experiment.

First, the Ultraviolet catastrophe was solved by Max Planck and it gave birth to quantum mechanics, the Michelson Moorley experiment was explained by Einstein's laws of relativity, and both these things opened Pandora's box, not only did we realize that these were not small issues, but that all that we have known until then was wrong or at least needed revision to take into account quantum and relativistic effects. So the 2 clouds of physics literally turned into the 1 billion clouds of physics.

If you read Max Planck's biography, it is mentioned that when he talked to his PhD thesis advisor, Planck said to him that he wanted to become a theoretical physicist, and his advisor discouraged Planck by saying that the field was literally dead because there wasn't much that needed to be discovered, he adviced Planck to go into experimental physics instead but Planck refused, I bet that his advisor bit his own tongue afterwards.

Until recently it was a fact that there are 4 fundamental forces in nature: Gravity, electromagnetic force, the strong force and the weak force, everything can be explained in terms of those 4 forces, well, what do you know, it appears (I read this very recently) that in 2019 and recently updated, CERN might have discovered another 5th force. https://physicsworld.com/a/more-evidence-for-a-fifth-force-found-in-radioactive-decay-measurements/

Back again to Einsteins theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, the two of them are not in perfect agreement, for years, scientists have tried to find a unifying theory between Einstein's relativity and quantum mechanics with no luck, many theories have been proposed, but some are so abstract that it is practially impossible to prove them with experiments using the scientific method, at least not humanly possible in the present and near future. Some scientists believe there will never be a Unifiying theory.

At the beginning, scientist thought that science was a way to explain God's creation (this was Newton, Galileo, Maxwell, etc.. belief), but over years it turned into this idea that Science is the absolute truth for everything and actually used to disprove God, however Science has been proven to be wrong so many times that you can't say it is the absolute truth. A big break ocured when the world was thought as deterministic (this was in fact Newton's and Einsteins Idea), A causes B which causes C, and when quantum mechanics was discovered it turned out to be probabilistic instead (Einstein disliked this idea and spoke out with his famous quote "God does not play dice with the world"), however, I've heard interviews from Nobel physics prize winners who think there will be a return to a deterministic point of view sometime in the future. My point is that Science is not the absolute truth, weather scientists can't predict with 100% acuracy what will be the weather be next week, let alone 50 years from now, hell, they couldn't even predict that Trump was going to win when everything pointed out that Hillary was the winner.

Science and mathematics are MODELS, they are human ways of explaining the world, that is what I've found over years of learning physics, math and engineering. Some things we use in mathematics are not even real, for example the concept of infinity, infinity is not even a number,  its a concept, it wasn't until Georg Cantor formally proposed what infinity is, and in fact he proved some crazy things like there are bigger infinities than others, for example the infinite set of real numbers is bigger than the inifinite set of rational or natural numbers. We tend to think of infinity as something very large, that is not what infinity is, the most common explanation is that its something that is unbounded. However, in the physical world, nothing is unbounded, not even the universe, some physicist argue about how the universe may be infinite but it hasn't been proven, also if the universe had a begining and its expanding, then it can't be infinite.

Calculus is based on the opposite, on something infinitely small called infinitesimal, the first theorists didn't like this idea, and instad tried to justify it with something called like "exhaustion", which means that if you make things smaller than a certain level, it esscentially becaomes "exahusted" and you can consider it infinistesimal, but that is not how Calculus works!, yet if you look at nature, there is not such thing as infinitesimal, there are fundamental particles, nothing can be less than those, there is the elemental charge which is 1.602X10^-19C, no charge can be smaller than that in isolation, unless you consider quarks. So we can agree that there is nothing either inifinitesimal or infinite. The only thing that is essentially the definition of infinity is God.

I've always been a catholic, but the more I have learned about math, science and engineering, the more religious I have become among other things, I think its the ability to realize that science is not truth but it certainly looks very similar to the truth. I certainly doubt very much about science all the time, its not like I think that the world is 5000 years old, but to be so narrow minded and believe that science can explain everything, is to me, simply not true and very arrogant from our perspective.

Even the theory of evolution which some people today think of it as the Law of evolution rather than the Theory of evolution might not be entirely true, David Berlinski and many others have very solid arguments to disprove it, they mention that the theory does explain things like how some species in some areas adapt physically to their enviroment but it fails to prove the general, broader picture. There is something called the Wallace problem which evolutionary scientists haven't been able to disprove, Wallace was a contemporary of Darwin, and basically argued something of the like (I am quoting Berlinski on Wallace): Suppose you take an isolated tribe from the Amazon, you take a 6 month old baby from a family of hunters of that tribe and you take the baby to the UK and you give the baby an English education, after some years, the baby, now a man will be indistiguishable from all other graduates of say Oxford, he will be able to speak english, do math, literature, dance, every other thing that any other human being could, but why? if he was part of the Amazon and he was part of a hunter tribe, why can he exihibit traits that are not relevant to his enviroment? why does he has these other 'hidden' traits that all human beings seem to have? afterall, knowing math is not relevant to his survival or relevant to becoming a hunter in the Amazon. There is also the fact that we are the only type of creature in the world, there is no other like us, to attribute that to only chance and adaptation is highly unlikely, Now, I am not saying I do not believe on Darwin's theory, but I want to emphasize it is just that, a Theory.

I wouldn't be surprised that the theory of evolution and many other things that we take for granted now are disproven or replaced by a better theory in the future.

I agree with Jordan Peterson (and Dyson also speaks of this) when he says that climate models are so unpredictable from the start and that they have so much error that when you project into the future 50 years from now, the uncertainty is extremely high, so how can you take actions to prevent climate change if you can't even measure or project with certainty what the results will be of taking such actions?

A common story regards what Bob Pease thought (hated actually) about spice, he said that spice lies, even if its based on all the physics theory, some argue that it is the lack of better models, etc... but the point is that what math and science predicts is sometimes very different from reality, there is this famous picture of Pease throwing a computer from the roof of National Semiconductor claiming "This computer won't lie to me again"

 

[user 37518]

Do you have a link to a credible news source to back up that story?

I watched the documentary so long ago (its been almost 15 years since I watched it) that I can't even remember exactly what the whole situation was, I'll watch the documentary again. If you are asking if I went on the internet and dig out if the story is true, no, I didn't

 

[user 37518]

As I explained before, it is a question of methodology, not belief. She is following the experts who follow the facts. They determine the best course of action.

Dyson, when he was way out of his field, following his biasesrather than facts used inferior methodology. This can even happen to Nobel laureates - who just like other experts can fall into the intelligence trap.

Dyson claimed that he worked with climatologists, either way, I believe Dyson a lot more than Greta