/sci/ - Science & Math

>>12682743
>Is clean energy actually going anywhere in our lifetime?

It's constantly being expanded. So it's going into your wallet to steal your shit.

Keep an eye on Australia and California. Two supposedly first world regions teetering on the brink of blackout thanks to their clean energy.

Renewables have been growing at an exponential rate so it's reasonable to expect that most of our power will be generated by them in our lifetimes. The limiting factor right now is energy storage. That means that unless batteries and other storage schemes become much cheaper the cost of electricity will either increase quite a bit over the next few decades or be subsidized to compensate.

>>12682743
Maximal theoretical efficiency is about 40%. Current solar cells routinely have about 30% efficiency. If you track stocks and government funding, you'd think solar power is our future. It's all a research meme. Government is too stupid to realize this, so when professors and engineers write grants, they say
>solar energy has room to grow
>clean energy
>gibs me money
and government splurges billions of dollars into research. And, physicists are right. They improve efficiency by a fraction of a percent every so often, but it's a meme.

>>12682791
>have been growing at an exponential rate
have been. Past tense.

>it's reasonable to expect that most of our power will be generated by them in our lifetimes

Hah, no. Germany might manage to briefly get a majority of electricity from renewable sources. But at the cost of the worlds most expensive electricity.

>>12682800
Wind turbines typically have efficiencies of 98% so your argument really only applies to solar, and the efficiency of solar doesn't matter. The Earth receives as much energy from the sun in an hour as humans use in all forms over a year. That's more than 8000 times the power we use which means, after adjusting for 20% efficiency, we need to cover less than 1/1000th of the Earth with solar panels in order to generate our power. We live on more space than that so we could provide most of our power with rooftop solar and solar shades. Multipurposed land such as installing solar over pastures and farmland growing shade-tolerant crops could easily provide the rest of the power we need. On top of that renewables are the cheapest form of energy available so what it really comes down to is energy storage.

>>12682743
no, those panels, the steel, the metal, the turbines, the batteries - they all use oil and coal in their production, and for batteries is even worse

>>12682835
>Wind power in Scotland represents all renewables
>Source: blogspot
Are you for real?

>>12682848
Or we build nuclear reactors, using 1/1000000th the amount of land, using existing technology.

Problem solved, no land use problem, no future tech requirement.

>>12682848
whats the return on energy and cash produced?
Does it cover the cost + energy CO footprint of all the coal and oil, plus mining?
The way I see it, mining and burning the coal for a single Turbine is more efficient and greener than creating the thing and then shipping it across country, just to be literally blown away 6 years from now - never returning investment, and never producing even 20% of the initial CO invested in.

Greenies are scamoids

>>12682854
That graph was Wind generation by year in the United States

>>12682848
Of course the sun produces a ton of solar energy. And yes, 20-40% is plenty for harnessing that power. The problem is that you cannot consistently harness that due to weather effects like rain and maintenance. These can't be fixed with research. If it's cloudy, you're fucked.

>>12682862
Sadly, that's not an option. The load is too variable for nuclear to keep up with. You might be able to get around that with energy storage and HVDC supergrids to help balance the load, but that would be even more expensive. Nuclear could provide a high baseload to decrease the energy storage requirement for renewables, but nuclear is one of the most expensive forms of power and personally I feel we should conserve our fissile material for space missions. No form of power beats nuclear for space missions and it's going to be a long time before we start mining asteroids.

>>12682874
Maybe the original, but a reverse google search only pulled up blogspot for that red graph.

And again, your only looking at wind.

>>12682890
>The load is too variable for nuclear to keep up with
It's only too variable when you have a fuckton of renewables that decide to create a shortfall of 200GW because a cloud appeared unexpectedly. Pure nuclear would not have a problem with compensating for diurnal variations.

>nuclear is one of the most expensive forms of power
Due to massive lobbying and obstructional lawfare and cherry picked examples of business mergers stalling the construction while fighting over who should pay cost overruns. Not because the technology is expensive.

>I feel we should conserve our fissile material for space missions.
Irrelevant, we have existing reservers worth hundred of years of global energy and development of uranium from seawater tech and the likes would solve the problem for thousands of years.

>>12682867
I'm not going to waste my time placating you with math that you'll demand I hold your hand through. The fossil fuel requirements will decrease as we transition to renewables anyways so your argument is largely invalid. Ultimately we'll only need coke for smelting metals and burning fossil fuels indefinitely is not an option both because of the economic damage it causes and the fact that it's a finite resource.

>>12682885
That's why the issue boils down to energy storage.

>>12682926
"energy storage" is a fucking meme bro. How do you propose that would work?

>>12682920
you can't melt and produce steel with wind power, retard, you can't mine coal with EVs too, stupid nigger
literal 120 IQ monkey nigger from reddit, just go back there and enjoy the upcummies

>>12682920
> finite resource.
exactly why we should not waste anything on "green" and "renewable" shit

>>12682903
>your only looking at wind.
Growth in PV doesn't look very hot anymore. It had a good year in 2018 with all the climate apocalypse wankers crying about renewable energy but there was more important things to worry about last year, and the coming years too.

>>12682920
loook at that retarded nigger

>>12682952
While solar is plummeting in growth, it's soaring in value and funding. Because government happily funds memes (like quantum computing)

>>12682917
>It's only too variable when you have a fuckton of renewables
That's wrong. Nuclear cannot change its load fast enough to keep up with variations on demand. Your options are to over-generate and lose a bunch of power, buffer the load with energy storage, use supplemental power sources like gas peaker plants, or accept that there could be an outage anytime someone flips on a high power device like an electric drier.

>Due to massive lobbying and obstructional lawfare and cherry picked examples of business mergers stalling the construction while fighting over who should pay cost overruns.
Irrelevant. Every energy source has its struggles and if nuclear can't overcome them then it's still too expensive to be practical.

>Irrelevant, we have existing reservers worth hundred of years of global energy and development of uranium from seawater tech
That's not economically viable yet and likely will not be anytime soon.

I have nothing against nuclear, it's just not the end-all-be-all power source it was made out to be.

>>12682848
>Wind turbines typically have efficiencies of 98%
And that's all I need to read.

Betz law, you colossal fucking idiot!
If it has 98% efficiency, then the wind stops flowing right at the end of the turbine.

Do us a favor and kill your self. God, that was stupidest thing I've seen this day

>>12682930
Google it. There are a variety of storage schemes such as gravitational storage, hydropower, thermal storage, flywheels, batteries, ect. Some are decidedly better than others, but all of them are being developed.

>>12682972
>. Nuclear cannot change its load fast enough to keep up with variations on demand.
oh is that why there is power outage in Cali? Because of the lack of renewables?

>>12682946
Yes, you can. Induction forges already exist and they don't require any special electricity. You simply need enough power available to use them. That's what the energy storage is for.

Good luck with that.

>>12682848
>Wind turbines typically have efficiencies of 98%
give me proof to that, you colossal faggot

>>12682986
> google those memes that never worked outside some meme phd degree in 3rd world university master's paper

>>12682986
All of which are theoretical. Notice the term you used, "being developed". Just like quantum computers are "being developed". It's a meme bro.

>>12682743
It already has outside the US.

>>12682990
and that energy is always more than the energy used with traditional methods with coal, learn your basics before you speak, nigger

>>12682949
So what, we just burn up all the oil and go back to a hunter-gatherer society? Is fusion still only a decade away like it has been for the last half a century? What's your solution if renewables are a "waste"?

>>12682970
>While solar is plummeting in growth, it's soaring in value and funding.
No.
It was being tuned down before 2020 and the recovery program needed after this pandemic will mean we'll be running everything on gas for the coming 20 years.

>>12682998
Australia?
New Zealand?
Germany?

How is losing BILLIONS of tax payers money exactly "working out"?

>>12683005
Renewables are cheap, you have to understand that the situation has changed quite a lot, since all those facebook memes you have read, were made.

>>12682743
>Is clean energy actually going anywhere in our lifetime?
Nope.
Not a chance in hell is it going anywhere but the trash.
People are excited over it because it is a new developed tech and the popsci fags eat it up without doing research about it
>unstable energy source
>energy storage issues
>efficiency, durability problems
>space and land lease consumption
>makes 300x more waste than nuclear

I'm giving it until 2030 before people realize that it is an absolute dogshit.

The most ironic fact about Renewable energy is that they kept on pushing for Solar and Wind when in reality, Geo and Hydro are the best and only stable forms of Renewable energy there is.

Stop hurting yourself and go Nuclear

>>12683003
We may be running on gas, but we'll continue researching solar for "the future". That comes from NSF grants and DOE grants and other governmental funding... which is still skyrocketing. You can fund deadends, dude.

>>12683010
then who took all the millions and billions of funding in those places, while only producing less than 1% net power?
sure they are cheap if the tax payers are paying 99% of the price, but are they reliable? no.
are they cheap outside the infrastructure already built that costs billions? no.

its a pipedream

>>12682952
16% per year is a shitload. If it maintains that growth rate (unlikely) then we would reach 100% solar in 32 years.

>>12683010
>Renewables are cheap
A myth. Electricity prices skyrocket everywhere where the green energy scam takes root.

> the situation has changed quite a lot
Changed. For the worse.

>>12683027
Effiency of Solar Panels degrade per year. You can never have 100%.
You always have to build new ones

>>12682982
You're an idiot. What that actually means is that 2% of the energy is lost as heat, not that the turbine extracts 98% of the available energy. Wind power does affect the local weather though so it may have unintended consequences.

>>12682988
Those are completely unrelated. The issue in using nuclear as your sole source of power is the huge variability in the load it needs to provide compared to how quickly current generation plants can change their output.

>>12683043
>How efficient is wind power? A wind turbine is typically 30-45% efficient – rising to 50% efficient at times of peak wind. If that sounds low to you, remember that if turbines were 100% efficient, the wind would completely drop after going through the turbine.

You are the stupidest thing on this board

>>12682743
>>12682791
>>12682848
>>12682874
>>12682926
>>12682920
>>12683010
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYHX-Ib3Q5Q

sorry, nuclearlets, the laws of thermodynamics are to be broken if you want your pipedream to be real

>>12683069
>schizo video bait

>>12682743
Yes.

>>12683069
E=mc^2
If you don't know how to use this equation, you don't know nuclear

>>12682993
I checked it out and what I cited was the maximum efficiency of electric motors (which generate the power from wind turbines). The typical efficiency looks like it's closer to 75% and they extract around 30-40% of the available energy from the wind.

> google those memes that never worked outside some meme phd degree in 3rd world university master's paper
You obviously haven't googled anything or you'd know that there are many such facilities currently in operation. Most of them are demonstration plants, but pumped hydrostorage has been around for decades.

>>12683086
>Global cumulative is less than 1 GW
You mean 1 nuclear plant?

>>12683091
>not using the real formula

[math]E = \sqrt{(mc^2)^2 + (pc)^2}[/math]

The rest mass comes from particles not moving, with p = 0, hence the rest mass

[math]E = m_0 c^2 [/math]

But yes, I agree, if you cannot use the formula you deserve to be shot.

>>12682994
"Being developed" means they are being improved, not that they're theoretical. Go look it up instead of demanding to be spoon fed.

>>12683001
Wrong. Induction forges can have greater efficiency than coal or gas fired forges and they're simpler in design.

>>12683104
where do YOU use it?

>>12683042
Oh no, a whole 2% per decade. However will we compensate?

>>12683097

>>12682994
you stupid? we have hydroelectric storage plants all over germany and austria since the 60s. you use excess electrical power, and the cheaper electricity at night to pump water up a mountain into a storage lake, and when electricity is needed you let it run down huge pipelines to the power plant on the bottom of the mountain. thats how you store electricity

>>12683109
Particle colliders, which are basically explosions happening constantly.

>>12683105
>0*1.20=0
The futuristic energy storage for pop-sci articles have improved by 20% from last year!

>>12683055
That's wind power to electricity, not the power applied to the motor vs it's actual generation. The wind blows whether or not you put a turbine in it's way so the energy extracted from the wind is less important than the energy wasted by the conversion. I was still wrong about the figure though, the motors are more like 60-75% efficient.

>>12683109
It's literally the ultimate equation used for measuring the effectiveness of your energy source.

Nuclear energy is the Holy grail of energy sources and any attempts at alternative energy source is just a waste of time.
Humanity cannot truly advance without accepting Nuclear

>>12683119
>Arguing from ignorance
Go read

>>12683122
Bitch, then you should say efficiency of the motor and not the turbine. Wind energy is crap.

>>12683110
It's up to 3% in the first year of use and anything between 0.5-2% additionally for every year that follows.

With all the dimwits jumping on the PV bandwagon there's also a lot of shit panels coming out of china that degrades even faster.

>>12683110
>On average, solar panels degrade at a rate of 1% each year.

>>12683128
Have read, stop lying.

>>12683129
It's currently the cheapest form of energy so reality would disagree with you.

>>12683290
What alternate world you came from?

>>12683285
Oh yeah? So what did you think of the ARES facility in Nevada? You don't know what I'm talking about? Then you clearly haven't done enough reading.

>>12683125
>holy grail

burns material just as rare as platinum, fuel rods have to be discarded after they just have been utilized for 15% of their potential energy, since they crack and undergo xenon poisoning. have to be put underground after undergoing an awfully expensive process of taking those fuel rod elements apart to store their components separately. efficiency is not a strength of nuclear energy. our current reactors are just shit.

>>12683135
>>12683136
Oh no, we need to install one extra panel for every 10 once a decade. This is truly the end of solar.

>>12683303
Uranium is as """rare""" as tin

>>12683294
The one that exists outside your mind.

>>12682890
We can get fuel from seawater for only double the cost, and it is effectively inexhaustible

>>12683304
Depending on the capacity of your solar farm, yes. That's 100+ panels every year

>>12683309
meanwhile still not making a dent in overal co2 emissions

>>12683309
>LCOE
HAHAAHAHHAHAHA

>>12682743
>anti-renewable thread #5370
Brought to you by big oil, coal, and nuclear shills (nuclear shills are oil shills pretending to care about nuclear).

>>12683331
Nah. Anyone who studied Physics would vote nuclear

>>12683303
Uranium is not hard to get, there is a nearly limitless supply in the oceans which continually renew from the seafloor.

>>12683298
>ARES facility in Nevada
Dumbest thing on the planet.

>>12682743
Renewables have been getting cheaper and cheaper and oil has been going down for the past decade. Coal might still be around, but it definitely won't be the dominant source of electricity.

>>12683312
>only double the cost
That's better than I expected, but it's still not great. One issue that would arise with large scale extraction is that the seawater would be depleted over time which will raise the cost of extraction (or at least the volume of seawater required) and the issue could be compounded by the mixing rate of the ocean similar to what we see with desalination now.

It could still be a viable source, especially since most of the cost of nuclear doesn't come from the fuel, but unless that cost goes down nuclear won't catch on as a source of power.

>>12683309
>LCOE
>LEVELIZED
>aka add and remove mystery costs until you get the price hierarchy you wanted when you started the study.

>>12682992
I don't get it.
1920 is flat because so many people died from WW1 and the economy fell hard. How is this an argument for anything?

by friend is a phd chemical engineer and he says chemical batteries are a gigantic meme. lithium ion is about as good as we are gonna get. maybe 10x improvement if we are lucky with esoteric technologies. no way are we going to be building massive energy storage facilities that rely on gravitational potential energy.

tl;dr solar and wind are meme. nuclear fusion or bust

>>12683316
It's a non-issue, especially once we start recycling old panels. There's no reason we can't recycle them now except that they require infrastructure to handle the logistics and specialized facilities to do the actual recycling.

>>12683375
Bro. Lithium ion batteries are chemical batteries.

>>12683375
>no way are we going to be building massive energy storage facilities that rely on gravitational potential energy.

We have those. They’re called dams.

>>12683324
>Not an argument

>>12683386
Suuuuuuuuuuureeee

>The LCOE metric is concerned only with costs. By ignoring the revenue or value of the electricity generated, it implicitly assumes that all technologies provide similar services. However, picking electricity sources is not the same as choosing among brands of gasoline, as not all electricity is created equal. Electricity generated now provides a different value than electricity generated several hours from now because demand for electricity varies over time and electricity storage is expensive. Electricity generated farther from consumption centers is more expensive than nearby generation because transmission is costly. Electricity generation that is easy to predict is more valuable than unpredictable generation because it helps electricity system operators maintain the balance between demand and supply. Electricity generation that emits more pollutants is more harmful than cleaner generation. This is why LCOE on its own is insufficient for determining which technology investors or utilities should build.

>>12683352
So now you've looked up one facility. Would you like to look up a few more? Would you like to qualify your opinion on the ARES facility? I know why it's impractical as a sole means of energy storage, but have you understood or put any thought into what you've read, or is this just another knee-jerk reaction?

>>12683381
>>12683381
yeah? li-io batteries are chemical batteries and they are fucking dog shit and aren't good enough. they have MUCH MUCH MUCH lower energy density than fucking body fat. we might as well just be harvesting americans for energy at this point.

My point is that even with crazy meme technology like solid state batteries or whatever shit, battery technology is utterly crap for urban energy demands. its probably good for rural areas though and that shouldn't be understated. but considering that like 60% of the world lives in urban areas, chemical energy storage will NEVER ever work and other means of energy storage are impractical and downright retarded.

>>12683384
yeah go build a dam in downtown tokyo. ill wait.

solar and wind tards conveniently leave out the costs associated with building massive dams when it comes to khw/$

>>12683369
So present data based on a "better" metric. I won't even argue with whatever metric you choose to cherry pick. Just find me anything that puts the cost of wind power above fossil fuels or nuclear.

>>12683331
come on big guy, produce me 1 kg of iron with wind, no, no, do it with solar, I'll wait (47 years)

>>12683390
Your point?

I think the biggest barrier to “fixing” climate change is humanity nutting the fuck up and admitting that it’s time to exert an unprecedented level of mastery over our planet. The idea that we can just straight up control the weather terrifies people and brings about too many political questions so we all just wring our hands and pretend like were at the mercy of Mother Nature while also claiming that humans are making measurable changes to the environment. A contradicting sentiment of helplessness and responsibility.

>>12683406
Produce me 1 kg of iron with nuclear.

>>12683414
based and redpilled. if we wanted to we can screw over all the other animals and we would be utterly fine. fuck the bees we can make our own pollinators if we wanted to.

we should take dna samples of all animals/plant species and only manage a handful of animals/plant species that we think are cool. reintroduce the extinct animals/plants once we figure out a permanent solution for them.

>>12683404
You mean like this?

>>12683425
Exactly. So if the polar ice caps melt and put california and florida under water, who gives a shit? Just move. So the tropics get warmer, so what? Movie north or south. I don't get what the whole problem is.

>>12683406
It requires 2250000000 joules of energy per ton of iron smelted in an electric arc furnace that's 625 kWh per ton or 0.625 kWh per kilo. I didn't bother to look up how long the smelting takes, but a single solar panel generates .8 kWh from 4 solar hours so if you needed that energy delivered in a half hour it would take less than 7 solar panels per kilo of iron smelted or 6250 panels to smelt the whole ton and you could smelt 2-8 tons per day depending on whether or not you use energy storage.

>>12683378
>dude, just recycle
LMAO
Your words fall to shit once you realize that nuclear is so cheap that reprocessing Nuclear waste was considered more expensive than just making new ones

>>12683440
Where's proof that these things will happen?

>>12683439
No, that doesn't have wind on it. Try to stay focused.

>>12683396
>Would you like to qualify your opinion on the ARES facility?
Yes. It should be called ARSE instead, because that's where they pulled the idea from.

>>12683444
He meant literally producing it from different elements.

>>12683450
Not the point. The point is that even if it did happen, as doomsayers say, who gives a shit?

>>12683444
Also, smelting existing iron is cheating. Try to gather iron from bog iron. Now that's more interesting

>>12683447
It's cute that you think nuclear fuel is where the cost of nuclear comes from and it's even cuter that you think the cost of reprocessing nuclear fuel reflects poorly on solar.

The fact of the matter is we refine the silicone from impure ores and starting with the refined silicon in solar panels is much less energy intensive and doesn't require any mining. Solar panels will be recycled as soon as the infrastructure and facilities are built. I have no idea when that will be though, since most Chinese companies dump a good portion of their silicon rather than build proper facilities to process it.

>>12683439
>If you don't include the expensive parts nuclear looks cheap
Wow genius

>>12683454
Go read

>>12683477
If you're playing that kind of path bad game, then why not include the yearly postdoc salary it costs to produce solar cells?

>>12683477
Nuclear payback time is 6-7 years.
Solar is 8 and highly dependent on weather.

How about this too
Why not include the cost of land leasing of solar farms
And the maintenance
And the cost of energy storage and transmission.

I just want nuclear energy. Why is everyone so scared of it? It's one of the most efficient and safe forms of alternative energy, and the new model nuclear power plants can burn the waste from old model power plants as their fuel.

I suppose the big oil companies would be opposed to nuclear, though, since it could theoretically displace their stranglehold on the global economy.

>>12683476
>silicon
kek
The most inefficient way to gather energy.

A real renewablefag would root for geo and hydro. Not solar memes

>>12683457
That's retarded. Just mine the ore.

>>12683463
It's smelting iron ore. You could estimate the energy required to mine that ore and establish how many panels would be required to power the mining machinery but that's kind of pointless. I've already pointed out earlier in this thread that we would need to cover less that 1/1000th of the Earth to provide enough energy for our needs in all forms and that includes the energy mining equipment would need if they were converted to electric motors.

>>12683494
Tell me about how you can just build geo or hydro almost anywhere.

>>12683502
Deep Drilling, Ocean Hydro, and Dams. You idiot.

>>12683439
Considering olkiluoto 3 is like 8 billion over budget and still hasn't produced any power 20 years later I'm not sure it's a great example.

>>12683494
Geothermal is ultimately nuclear power and hydroelectric is best for power storage. Both are highly location dependant. I'm not saying that solar is the only renewable energy worth investing it, it just has the simplest math and all renewable energy originates from the sun.

>>12683502
The amount of viable hydropower in the US hasn’t even been remotely maxed out. Shit, the dams we have aren’t even operating at max capacity. Thanks NIMBYs!

>>12683511
The extended maintenance was also made to prepare for a license renewal application. The license extension was granted in September 2018 and allows the reactors to operate until 2038.[16]

>>12683444
>and you could smelt 2-8 tons per day depending on whether or not you use energy storage.

You can't run a smelter on intermittent or unstable power. The equipment can be damaged by the blackout and if your potline is left to cool for a few hours the equipment is ruined.

Also 8 tons is a single cubic meter of steel. It's something a person would be doing in their rural backyard. Not what heavy industry does. Also heavy industry needs to operate independent of the sun shining be it weather or seasons or night shifts. so you have 6 250 000 solar panels to supply a steel mill with power for a few hours during the day. Then you'll have gas peaker plants that run for 12 hours of the day to ensure power actually stays on. And the question then is, why bother with solar panels and peaker plants. Just go combined cycle gas all the way.

>>12683512
Deep geo is literally just dig to the mantle anywhere

>>12683516
That's units 1 and 2

>>12683489
If you're going to compare solar to anything else you can't ignore the cost of offsetting intermittency. That means either factoring the cost of gas peaker plants or battery storage into the price of it.

>>12683525
Unit 3 is not yet even operational

>>12683489
We do this it's called lcoe
>>12683309

>>12683533
I know that's what I said

>>12683535
lcoe removes the exact factors that make renewable so worthless

>>12683512
>it just has the simplest math
Which misrepresents the troublesome intermittency that high solar results in. We could build enough solar panels to generate twice as many TWh that we need, and we're still sitting in the dark after sunset.
And once you factor in long range transmission lines. Batteries, gas peaker plants, pumped hydro and complex power electronics that make sure that a grid based on AC from spinning turbines somehow don't blow up in your face when your energy sources are DC all of sudden and god knows what else.

Then your simple math suddenly is the worlds biggest bowl of spaghetti.

>>12683548
ironically those same factors make nuclear worthless.

>>12683535
Ah yes, also called the "government subsidies" metric. Very pertinent to this discussion.

>>12683519
>You can't run a smelter on intermittent or unstable power
That's where the 2 ton minimum comes from, dipshit. One hour of peak sun. If you store all the extra energy you can smelt 8 tons per day off those panels.

>Also 8 tons is a single cubic meter of steel. It's something a person would be doing in their rural backyard
Who said it would be done in anyone's yard? Just hook up the panels to the grid and any smelting plant using electric arc furnaces can use that energy.

>Also heavy industry needs to operate independent of the sun shining be it weather or seasons or night shifts
That's what the energy storage is for. Try to keep up.

>Then you'll have gas peaker plants that run for 12 hours of the day to ensure power actually stays on.
That's why renewable energy is dependent on energy storage. Do you have a learning disability?

>And the question then is, why bother with solar panels and peaker plants. Just go combined cycle gas all the way.
Because that's unsustainable and the emissions cause ecological damage with economic repercussions.

>>12682743
Companies that profit from dirty energy slow the progress. People could all sorts of clean energy if bad actors got out of the way. Instead of screwing all of mankind they should be the ones to transition into those markets now. Even if they didn't rape as much profits in the short term, they would be set up as the long term players.

>>12683557
Ah, yes
Weather, energy storage, trasmission, and efficiency loses.
Totally relevant to Nuclear

>>12683520
And the depth you need to dig is location dependant and adds to the cost of the project. I'm not advocating against it, but I don't think geothermal alone is the answer.

>>12683569
Sure. But it and Hydro are the most reliable renewable energy source there is. Not solar or wind

>>12683555
>Imagine being this illiterate
So what you're saying is that renewables are dependant on energy storage? Wow, if only someone had pointed this out earlier

>>12682791
>>12682848
>>12682926
>>12682990
>>12683444
>>12683559

>>12683565
>Weather
remember when france had to shut down plants due to a heat wave, that was funny
> energy storage
nuclear can't react to demand in a cost effective way, if you want to provide power for peak you have to build twice as many plants which are sitting unused on off peak hours. (ironically it probably would be cheaper to use batteries to supply peak hours)
>trasmission and efficiency loses.
yes, you can't just build a plant everywhere.

>>12683558
>anybody who proves me wrong is a paid shill
Cope harder.

>>12683577
Reliability isn't the only factor. Geothermal is nice, but the location dependant cost is a limiting factor for it. Hydroelectric is also great, but dams can only be built in certain places and doing so damages the environment. Both of them have their place in the future of power generation, but so do wind and solar.

>>12683583
And energy storage isn't viable today. Therefor solar energy isn't viable today. Therefor you're here shilling for a dead on arrival energy form.

In that way the math is simple. Now go fuck yourself and take your media talking points with you back to simple wikipedia.

>>12682791
Storage shouldn't be the issue if the source is regular and constant; it's mostly an issue with short term sources, say lightning bolts. Wave driven gravity pumps are endless and clean.

Regarding storage though, you think mechanical storage could ever work? What about creating multiple massive flywheels, get them all spinning up in, and then draw off them as needed.

>>12683585
>nuclear can't react to demand in a cost effective way
It can. what you're thinking of that it's inflexible in reacting to demand is renewables. They are completely useless in all categories except for virtue signaling by politicians and dumb german teenagers who fuck arabs and listen to green propaganda all days.

>>12683594
>free energy isn't viable

>>12683585
Yeah, I remember Nighttime on solar farms. Very funny
Yeah, I remember control rods
Yeah, I remember literally every nuclear plants is built in or near a city

You can't speak shit, bitch
You know nothing about physics

>>12683609
That is correct

>>12683594
Energy storage today has a similar cost to nuclear energy. Therefore nuclear power isn't a viable alternative. Therefore you're here shilling for a dead on arrival energy form.

Now go fuck yourself and take your media talking points with you back to simple wikipedia.

>>12683606
>It can
explain how running a nuclear power plant at half capacity saves you money.
(thanks to thermal stresses it actually costs more)

>>12683609
If green energy is free then why do German households pay the most for their electricity in all of Europe?
Checkmate retard.

>>12683606
Nuclear is old tech. It can't keep up with modern times.
A bit like you, gramps.

>>12683622
rebuilding your entire grid virtually overnight is expensive. No shit.

>>12683618
>Energy storage today has a similar cost to nuclear energy.

Energy storage doesn't produce any power. You never made any sense but you're making even less now.

>>12683619
You don’t run at half. You run wide open at all times and false load with carbon capture machinery.

>>12683626
So the free energy is actually extremely expensive. Thanks for admitting that you're both a retard and a liar.

>>12683605
There are energy storage plants that do exactly that. The flywheels they use store an impressive amount of energy at high efficiency, but they're limited by the materials we have available. If I remember correctly a fully spun up flywheel can deliver a few megawatts of power for around 5 seconds, but it's been years since I've looked into it so you should check it out for yourself. The power density is typically higher than gravitational storage schemes if I remember correctly.

>>12682988
Where are the power outages? I can't remember the last time I had one and I live in Los Angeles.

Flyovers will never learn.

>>12683628
Cool Idea, but when half your thread is whining about high energy prices in germany I'm getting mixed signals.

>>12683622
Don't they export the most electricity in all europe?

>>12682743
Have you been hiding in a cave for the last 10 years? Solar power is everywhere, you can get it as a standard feature on a new house even, commercial and corporate parking lots are full of solar panels, and they keep edging closer and closer to fusion being practical.
>>12682759
>hurr durr just keep burning coal

>>12683627
>Imagine being this retarded
Let me dumb it down for you. Nuclear cost a lot all the time. Renewables cost very little, but need energy storage. Using renewables and energy storage costs a lot sometimes, but over time averages out to a lower cost than nuclear power.

Let me know if you need me to use smaller words.

I feel all alternative energy sources, including nuclear, are best used Ina combination tailored to the local needs and environments. The issue of storage and portability is serious for all of them. And fossil fuel shills use the same tactics, they divide opposition and shift blame to individuals - who can't reasonably do anything - and ensure nothing is actually done to threaten them. All the while they can pretend they are totally green and pushing for change, pure lip service that actually holds their competition back.

>>12683622
You're aware that every country in Europe produces renewable energy, right? Not just Germany.
You're aware that your meme graph has nothing to do with your post, right?

>>12683629
infrastructure =/= energy production

>>12683635
They import a lot too. I guess they give away all their free energy and then force the German households to pay for the super expensive imported energy or something because they pay out of their ass for their electricity in the end.

>>12683658
That's called balancing the grid.

>>12683642
pretty much, it's why the best solution is just tax the absolute shit out of CO2 emissions and let the market figure it out.

>>12683587
That's not what I meant. It's just that lcoe takes into account government subsidies and tax breaks.
So it's pretty useless if you want to talk about what it costs society to run these things. It's pretty useful for someone who wants to build a powerplant and make some money doing it though.
Project harder faggot.

>>12683639
>Nuclear cost a lot all the time.
Another lie. Nuclear is capital intensive for new plants but running costs are very low and the plants have long lifetimes.
>Renewables cost very little
Another lie, see Germany >>12683622
see Australia >>12683040

Listen here little man. You can say anything you want, language lets you do that. But if it doesn't represent reality, then it's a lie. And so far you've only written lies, every single post here in this thread that you've made? Lies. It doesn't matter if you type them out again. They're still lies. It doesn't matter if you say something else that's also not true. Still lies.

If your brain ever matures beyond a grade school level you'll have to come to terms with the fact that your lies don't change reality, and that in a discussion among adults who are educated on a topic, you'll never get anywhere by parroting your lies. You'll have to actually know things and be capable of forming rational thoughts and chains of logic.

Now go cry to mommy because bad man online called your bullshit.

>>12683682
No, most studies posted are Unsubsidized analyses. please actually do some research before shitposting please.

>>12683623
Ever heard of a windmill?

>>12683689
>Another lie. Nuclear is capital intensive for new plants but running costs are very low and the plants have long lifetimes.
Meanwhile in the US even existing plants can't stay open if their subsidies aren't renewed.
Actual average plant lifetime is around 20 years, pretty close to solar.

the truth hurts i'm sorry nuclear isn't some silver bullet.

>>12683689
>Imagine being this retarded
The cost of construction is built into the cost of the energy. That's why nuclear is expensive.

>Another lie, see Germany
>see Australia
See the actual cost of energy and try not to cherry pick a place with some of the worst sunlight or pretend that Australia doesn't use fossil fuels to produce 80% of it's energy.

>Listen here little man. You can say anything you want, language lets you do that. But if it doesn't represent reality, then it's a lie. And so far you've only written lies, every single post here in this thread that you've made? Lies. It doesn't matter if you type them out again. They're still lies. It doesn't matter if you say something else that's also not true. Still lies.
The irony.

Facts aren't lies just because you want them to be different. If you want anyone to build more nuclear power then the cost has to go down. As it stands it's the most expensive form of power and it will be completely irrelevant for terrestrial power generation in the next couple of decades. But hey, if you manage to keep up with the falling costs of energy storage maybe we'll use them to provide a baseload.

>>12683744
https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(19)30300-9
There's some pretty interesting research, if you have another source generate 5% the possible price of storage for wind and solar to be competitive with NG goes up by around 30 times.

>>12683444
this is your brain on being stuck in higher education for years and never producing anything meaningful in your life

>>12683765
That's definitely an interesting article. I'm not too surprised that the cost of energy is more sensitive to energy storage than capacity. Hopefully the cost of energy storage keeps dropping so there's more incentive to switch to renewables.

>>12683637
>muh solar cells
>muh windturbines
Well it's a great thing that we're spending hoards of money and materials keeping the planet clean, I'm sure mother nature loves all the waste from manufacturing solar cells and wind turbines, plus all the waste from chemical batteries to store all our "green energy" extrapolated to an entire nation of business and people. Then once we do that we can begin to understand and switch to fission energy, which is cleaner, safer, and cheaper! .....wait, somethings off here.

>>12683415
theoretically you can, the most efficient way is using coal
the point is, electricity is poor choice for the iron and large metallurgy industry, and its even worse if its "renewable" type of energy, its virtually impossible

>>12683444
what a retarded tranny

>>12683779
t. Highschool dropout working at Jiffy Lube

>>12682759
China is literally blacking out from coast to coast because they're trying to make the country run on solar.

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3115119/china-suffers-worst-power-blackouts-decade-post-coronavirus

>>12683788
I hope you mean using the coal for coke

>>12683113
My particles collided with your sister's last night.

this whole thread is a living proof of what reddit level /sci have turned into
full of trannies, sub 120 IQ niggers and bunch of space communism mutts and other bug-like creatures

>>12683803
>>>/pol/

>>12683801
I'm sorry for your micropenis.

>>12683799

>>12682743
in countries that have the industry and political will maybe, so china (if they feel like it)

>>12683799
>>12683829
From this basic cost analysis, we can see that percentage cost of the energy to produce steel is the same across each process. Even the highest cost of production of pig iron to electric arc furnace production is only 14% of the total market price of steel. Thus, at this time, while there are significant energy savings by using scrap steel and an electric arc furnace to produce new steel, there is little cost savings. The benefits of using electric arc furnaces will mostly come from the use of scrap steel. As high-quality iron ore reserves run out, lower iron content ore will need to be processed to create steel. This may raise energy requirements in the future and could raise costs. For there to be any appreciable difference in the costs of production between energy sources, we will need to see a divergence in the cost per joule. It is possible that natural gas prices will fall below that of coal, making natural gas more affordable. However, at this time, the costs of energy are basically the same across energy sources, most likely due to all these energy sources being ultimately sourced from carbon (electric power plants running on coal or natural gas).

>>12683829
You know that graph says that electricity requires the lowest amount of energy to produce steel and the only reason it's not the cheapest is because that energy costs an order of magnitude more, right?

>>12683838
>However, at this time, the costs of energy are basically the same across energy sources
So what you're saying is we should use the coal to produce coke as a reducing agent instead of burning it to melt iron

>>12683793
>Analysts blame the resurgence of manufacturing, a coal shortage and China’s central economic planning for the problem
If they didn't have all that renewable energy, the blackouts would have been worse.

>>12683331
>he thinks anyone would shill on this backwater board

>>12682890
>nuclear is one of the most expensive forms of power
Is that why my 75% nuclear energy country has been enjoying cheap power for decades?

>>12683955
No, you can thank subsidies for that. Is the power really "cheap" if the cost comes from taxes?

>>12683962
And yet it only got more expensive when they decided that we needed to build solar panels, wind turbines, and that most of the energy sector needed to be continuously privatized.

>>12682743
With the amount of solar module production capacity Chinese companies are bringing online this year (and some relatively conservative capacity factor assumptions, like 10-20%), their next 30 years of production would be enough to completely meet current worldwide electricity demand. They are adding more capacity at over 20% per year, so on current trends the whole world will be running on solar power by the mid 2030s.

>>12683986
>The whole world will be running on solar power by the mid 2030s
>Sky gets cloudy for a few hours
>A third of the country goes into blackout
Shieeeet

>>12682743
No. It's not going to go anywhere.

>>12683998
>batteries

>>12683979
Probably because it isn't subsidized as heavily. When you're used to paying for your energy through taxes it might be a little surprising when you get billed for it instead.

>>12684003
Energy storage is expensive, inefficient, and prone to leakage. Especially if you store the energy months in the summer to prepare for winter.

You'll be lucky to still end up with half as chemical batteries are not meant for long-term storage

>>12682743
The same place they said it would go in the 1970s: to Space.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercritical_carbon_dioxide#Working_fluid
A solar-thermal concentrator plant in a high sun-synchronous orbit, driving multiple stages of supercritical CO2 turbines (which you use because they're much more compact for the same amount of wattage compared to a steam generator) before terminating in a massive radiator assembly, sending the power down via a diffuse microwave beam would be an extremely attractive model of power plant. One of the major benefits is it works continuously, 24/7, and the ground station to receive it is just an inexpensive rectenna array of wires that you could erect over farmland and not block light from reaching crops.
The downsides are: it will jam some radio frequencies under the beam, and if the ambient temperature rising about 2-3 degrees is a problem you might not want to build your array in that spot.

>>12682759
the Australia break down was hilarious. They figured since solar and wind couldn't meet 24/7 demand that the simple answer was to make more so they could reach 100% daily demand.

Well that overloaded the system with too much power during the day sending surges frying a big chunk of their grid as it blasted past insufficient breaks. Then the night came as they were trying to get things back on line and found insufficient power from the solar and wind to help get things back up.

Apparently the solar and wind companies were more then happy to build far more solar and wind capacity then needed. And the government was happy to order more. But somehow the smart people were completely ignored when they highlighted that too much power during the day doesn't fix power deficiency at night without some kind of energy storage which they had very little of and shutdown many peaker plants as well.

Last I heard the government and companies were in a nasty law suit to see who was going to pay to fix the mess. If they just had a huge energy storage system they would be in a good position.

I would assume something similar is happening in California, on top of the painfully neglected energy grid that ids falling apart as they still haven't fixed the madness Enron put them in by doing something similar with virtual future energy trading. Turns out you can buy energy to power your city from future production, but stock traders aren't grid engineers.

>>12685295
>But somehow the smart people were completely ignored when they highlighted that too much power during the day doesn't fix power deficiency at night
That's not why you build more, you build more than 100% because there are non optimal days. e.g. a system that can produce 100% of the energy need during a autumn day will produce more than 100% during a clear summer day.

>>12685315
But the politicians and construction companies promised that the over capacity would let them meet 100% solar at night.
And that was there down fall.
well that ... and the pumped the extra energy into the grid during the day making things catch fire and explode.

>>12685409
No they didn't.

>>12683398
>yeah go build a dam in downtown tokyo. ill wait.
if they can build enormously huge underground structures like G-Cans, they can build a hydroelectric dam underground as well. i do not see any issue with that. at least they would have a way to use the water G-Cans collects in the rainy season.

>>12685190
NO!
Fuck off!
Mega structures in orbit is absolute disaster waiting to happen due to the nature of space junk.
It takes only 1 micro asteroid to cause a domino effect that would not only destroy it, but also ruin space traffic for decades

>>12685295
>When you get your news from Infowarz

>>12685315
That only works if you have powerful batteries with extreme efficiency
Your rechargeable AA battery captures only 20%.
Li-io has 99% but long term storage causes them to leak and explode.

>>12683011
>Geo and Hydro

This guy gets it. The answer for clean energy is nuclear (fission for now, hopefully with fusion in the future) for baseload generation with hydro and geothermal to pick up the grid slack due to varying demand. Use hydro pumped storage as toppers plants and gas toppers where hydro pumped storage isn't feasible.

>>12685190
We're getting into the territory of Larry Niven's Kzinti Lesson only in this case any orbital system capable of providing electrical power to planet earth becomes increasingly capable of being turned into a devastating weapon with the more power it can generate.

It may be a diffuse microwave beam, but it's still a beam with the power output of the Three Gorges Dam or higher and if you concentrate it then you can cause all sorts of mayhem.

>>12686707
Not going to happen, bruh
Spacejunks are an absolute nightmare.
The ISS and local satellites are only safe now because we aren't serious about going to space yet

>>12685190
Oh hey, I remember those disasters from Sim City!

>>12686707
First, this only makes the US Department of Defense's erection harder. Second, to be a directed energy weapon like that you need to be able to focus the microwave beam down into a fraction of what is necessary to transmit the power for electrical purposes. It would be immediately obvious if you were making an emitter array of that type, the beam in this case is a couple km wide.

>>12686607
The generator portion would only be about the size of a large wind turbine's mechanical housing and the mirrors would be sail-like aluminized foil. It would take up a large area, but when most of it is ultra-thin plastic that changes the equation some. The only question mark is the size of the radiator needed but that should be straightforward to calculate. I doubt the whole generator assembly would be much larger than the ISS, it would at least be on the same order of magnitude in terms of size.

>>12686980
>The International Space Station (ISS) was struck sometime last month by a flake of paint or small metal fragment that caused a chip in the windows of the Cupola, "the best room with a view anywhere," the European Space Agency (ESA) said in a press release.

Kindly kill yourself, you ignorant shit.
You have no idea of how dangerous space junks are and yet you insists on space structures because "so coooooool"

>>12687097
We're going to have megastructures in orbit sooner or later. Get used to it.

>>12687183
LOL No.
Not until nuclear was accepted as the only way out

>>12686948
>microwave laser
>couple km wide
>directed energy weapon
You mean the wavelenght that cannot pass through rocks?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

We already have something better and it's called ICBMs.

>>12682743
Yes, probably in next 10 - 20 years as batteries get cheaper and better.

>>12687210
Being able to melt a hole in a ship's hull with a gigawatt microwave beam sounds pretty militarily useful

>>12686724
It turns out they wouldn't work that way in real life, all you'd notice is your wifi and cellular signals would go to shit and the air temp may go up a couple degrees

>>12687346
Ah, yes, I'm sure a huge weapons platform in space totally won't get shot down.
You popsci retard

>>12687376
You missed higher up in the thread where I pointed out it would be plainly obvious if a power plant like this was dual use. An emitter needed to diffusely beam power over a few square miles is an entirely different beast from one that emits a beam that remains coherent and does not diverge.
That having been said, it would take a few minutes for a missile to reach that altitude and if you made a weapons platform like this, it would probably be able to employ its own emitter or secondary emitters as point defense.

>>12687445
Yeah, I'm sure that's totally better and cheaper than ICBMs that only have to scatter enough spacejunk to destroy it,

Get out, you retarded shit

>>12687351
and the delicious cancer!

>>12687462
Microwaves don't cause cancer.

>>12682743
Yeah it will eventually, but sooner or later I think we will likely switch to atomic energy

>>12682743
>clean
>made in China