Matador
Well-known member
So conventional fossil fuels plants don't use any concrete or similar materials? Or the concrete in a fossil fuel plant is different from that in a solar farm and doesn't stick around for millions of years?
The ugly truth about solar farms
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AnalogPackrat
Well-known member
Keep missing the point. These so-called "green" sources are not as environmentally friendly as they're made out to be by true-believer advocates.
I'll add that making concrete is very energy intensive (mining, processing, grinding it's various components). It can be recycled into aggregate for new concrete, but this is also energy intensive. If rebar was used, recycling is more complicated. I watched a huge old IBM campus in south San Jose get demolished and mostly recycled over a period of about a year c.2006-07. It was on my commute route. There was an impressive array of huge diesel powered machinery set up to pulverize and separate the various materials.
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In the US (and likely elsewhere), old concrete often gets reused. Way back when my neighborhood was still poor, there was a spot nearby where old concrete from commercial projects was delivered and crushed to bits. Rebar was removed & recycled, and the smashed concrete itself was put to use in various ways on new construction projects. While it may not dispose of concrete, it does put old concrete to use in new projects.
sahib
Well-known member
May be I should have expanded a bit more (though AnalogPackrat clarified) , but I certainly was not suggesting that. What I mean is to be proportional and sensible. Solar energy also has its own pollution and certainly it is not giving us that free meal that is being touted about. But we now have got to the stage that this whole green thing has gone beyond being a religion and is turning into Spanish inquisition.
We have a limited way of getting to know each other here, but I am as green as one can get. In fact I challenge anybody around the world when it comes to protecting the environment. We were brought up with that long before most of these Jonny-come-latelies, and I am 63.
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L´Andratté
Well-known member
"Green energy", well it doesn´t have as bad an impact as oil, but in the end it´s only the stopping of mind boggling massive squandering of natural resources for no good reason at all, that could turn us around on our way to the next mass extinction event. And this is NOT about taking anything away from people like you and me.
It may need to deprive a couple of ego-boosted apes from drumming their fists against their swollen chests nd feeling like the king of the world. But our children could live with that I, I guess...
Afraid it won´t happen, though. Playing people´s minds is a well developed technique by now.
It may need to deprive a couple of ego-boosted apes from drumming their fists against their swollen chests nd feeling like the king of the world. But our children could live with that I, I guess...
Afraid it won´t happen, though. Playing people´s minds is a well developed technique by now.
Ah the old "you didn't build that" defense of big government.
Ex President Obama spouted that one in a 2012 speech.
JR
Ah the old "let's insinuate a factual statement is vaguely connected to a politican I don't like for lack of a counterargument" attack.
I don't think this is completely factual... While government purchases supported a lot of early electronic development, not to mention military purchases to support the war efforts (more electronics for WWII). The history of electronic component development includes multiple private companies ranging from IBM, to intel and texas instruments (and much smaller companies).
Life is short and this is well covered ground (back in 2012). I repeat this is argued to support even more government spending. There is an endless list of wasteful and ineffective government spending. It appears worse now than ever.
JR
Matador
Well-known member
Who is touting that it is a free meal? The entire thread was premised on a notion that in fact, solar farms destroy the land they are built on. I provided two examples of power generation that indeed *did* destroy the land they we built on. Then there were various non sequiturs about concrete.
Of course solar energy has its own pollution, but in totality, it is orders of magnitude less per MW than it's fossil fuel counterparts, especially over the lifetime of the installation. If that reality is a "Spanish Inquisition" they I don't know what else to say.
sahib
Well-known member
AnalogPackrat
Well-known member
The area required for solar and wind per GWhr relative to other sources is a big problem. The environmental lobby, which as Sahib noted, has transformed into a near cult, pushes solutions with grossly oversimplified talking points and no understanding of actual power grid design and operation. If these other technologies have actual advantages, they will be adopted.
Now do nuclear.
The real issue about energy is cost/benefit. To raise the world's poor out of poverty requires providing them with inexpensive energy. Expecting them to thrive using solar panels and windmills is the modern day equivalent of saying "let them eat cake".
Fossil fuels are plentiful and relatively cheap, we should use it wisely, while developing newer alternatives, and maybe some old ones like nuclear. We are making too many here-now decisions based on speculation about what will happen a century from now. In the meanwhile cheap energy can help us adapt to slow moving changes like rising sea levels or whatever (until the next ice age arrives.... only half kidding).
We need to be smarter and respond to this logically not emotionally.
JR
Fossil fuels are plentiful and relatively cheap, we should use it wisely, while developing newer alternatives, and maybe some old ones like nuclear. We are making too many here-now decisions based on speculation about what will happen a century from now. In the meanwhile cheap energy can help us adapt to slow moving changes like rising sea levels or whatever (until the next ice age arrives.... only half kidding).
We need to be smarter and respond to this logically not emotionally.
JR
That method has now been refined to combine it with steel production. The end result is steel, cement and slack that's perfect for making concrete.
Besides, our concrete doesn't last as long as the Romans' concrete. That's being studied but I've not seen results. Maybe I've missed them.
Concrete is far less dangerous for the environment than asphalt. Emissions from ICE cars have been optimised so far that emissions from roads come into sight. After that brakes and tires come into the picture.
It's never as black and white as in the title of this thread. It's true only if you refuse to look at the successes. It's also true as in "solar isn't the perfect solution every time".
And sometimes, even the best managed projects go bad. That's why you want an overview...
What substances would that be?
According to Goolge, "cadmium telluride, copper indium selenide, cadmium gallium (di)selenide, copper indium gallium (di)selenide, hexafluoroethane, lead, and polyvinyl fluoride.
As an engineer, you will probably recognise the first few as semiconductor dopant. Is that a problem?
Hexafluoroethane is a "safe" gas. Non toxic. Not very dangerous to the environment.
Polyvinyl fluoride is a typical transparent film, used in millions of other products nobody balks about, like cars, trains and planes. Yes, it's a plastic, so it's dangerous to the environment because it doesn't break down easily.
Veoila, to name just one, already operates a few plants for solar cell recycling. There are no problems technically, but very little of the recyclable materials is worth a lot. We'll probably see a tax on solar panels to finance recycling. That worked perfectly for batteries, so I don't see why it wouldn't work for solar panels.
ATM, a staggering 99+% of batteries is recycled over here. The remainder is mainly from hillbillies who still dump their used car battery in the woods. And phones lost in the river and ponds. The last one is growing, unfortunately...
Look into the amount of concrete involved in building a nuclear plant--it is beyond massive, and the environmental cost is far greater than footings for solar panels. No solution (so far) is perfect, but crapping on solar because of concrete footings is..................a stretch.
That's the usual humbug that simply ignores tens of thousands simple, small and successful projects from all over the world. And, obviously the disadvantages of fossil fuels. If you add the dangerous waste leftover from the oil industry worldwide and then compare, it's a completely different story. And that's what's left out. Every time again. A few Africa countries have been saddled with environmental problems from oil production/transport. And the Gulf isn't doing too well either. Ironically, the oil industry is employing a team of biologists that tries to prove it's not pollution, but global warming. And that's fast turning into a major economical problem, cause some of the algae produce very bad odor if they land en masse. Not good for the tourist industry in several Middle American countries.
I've said it before, zero fossil fuels, is a pipedream, even in the longer run. It's just a bad slogan.
Meanwhile, the first aircraft powered by solar cells is flying and 'till now, reliably. Expected to be in commercial flight within a decade. A few flying cars are in the works, nearing road tests. Etc.
The basic mistake is they want to set a simple message to convey a difficult story. We need badly to pollute less. Not zero. Nobody knows where the zero point should be.
Matador
Well-known member
The real issue is about profit.
Speaking of books, The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won't Save the Planet by Brett Christophers goes into this in excruciating detail. In short, fossil fuels have a financing advantage, in that spot pricing for fuels as an input tends to stabilize pricing for energy over the long term. The main mechanism is that when commodity input pricing rises, it rises for everyone. One plant isn't going to buy fuel for half the price of the next (especially amortized over months or years), and when fuel prices rise, by definition spot energy pricing will rise along with it, protecting the margin for the plant in the long term. In addition, fossil fuel energy manufactures charge above and beyond the fuel cost in their energy costs, so when bidding happens on the spot market it is a level playing field. The profit on fuels can boost the overall margins for the entire plant.
Solar (and wind) has no such advantage: the spot price of sunlight and wind is zero for everyone. It costs nothing to deliver (there is no supply chain). Solar and wind farms can bid a 1-hour spot price far lower than fossil fuel plants can, however once the plant is built, their margin is solely defined by what the market bids for that energy, and not how much profit can be extracted from fuel commodities. For a bank financing a power plant, the fossil fuel plant can deliver less risk on investment over the lifetime of the plant simply because every fossil fuel plant moves along with the energy markets, averaged over the 10-20 year lifetime of the plant 9which by definition is always increasing). A solar plant can deliver energy at a 30-40% discount per MWh over a fossil fuel plant (even accounting for capital costs, etc), however it's operating profit margin is half.
AnalogPackrat
Well-known member
Again, missing the point. Thousands of concrete footings spread over hundreds of acres of once farmland or forest is a big problem for future reclaimation. The fact that modern "environmentalists" are now all-in on destruction of large swaths of arable and forested land resources (never mind the visual pollution) is telling. The footprint of a nuke plant per GWhr produced is small.
I'm not arguing about simple volume of concrete, but destruction of land better used for other important things. Concrete (and other on-site solar/wind infrastructure) is part of what makes reclaimation difficult and contributes to the "carbon footprint" of solar/wind systems which the neo-greenies want to ignore.
sahib
Well-known member
We would only know that if we compared the power output between nuclear and solar like to like. However, I was not putting solar down. I was trying to say to be proportional and sensible.
Here in Scotland sunshine is a rare commodity. So, plenty of wind. In terms of central heating the medium term plan is to convert everything to heat pumps. For new builds I can understand, but in cities (like where I live) the architecture is not compatible with that technology. But the greens attitude is like "deal with it".
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That's simply BS.
