/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.2741676]

Tell me /sci/, what's your opinion of Germany's solar energy program? They're paying 50 freakin' cents a kWh to solar suppliers in their nation.

Shouldn't they be spending that wasted money improving solar technology so it's actually a cost effective alternative instead of making retarded political statements using underdeveloped technology?

Unless they decide to screw over their investors when a new party takes power by cutting the prices they offer for solar energy, they're wasting shitloads of money. The energy crisis ain't that bad yet.

[Anonymous No.2741696]

Solar power is great, but they're going to regret their over emphasis on it when they shut down all their nuclear plants and rely on coal for their base line power.

[Inurdaes !V1sPhobos. No.2741709]

They should be focusing on a way to make space-based solar power affordable so they can have good base load power.

[Anonymous No.2741845]

If they could somehow drive electric generator turbines with the undercurrent of racism that runs through their country they would have limitless energy.

[Anonymous No.2741854]

...that's the entire point of subsidies. It makes something affordable so people will start using it and so companies will do research, have a market where they can exploit economies of scale, etc. I don't think solar is going to be ready by the time it is needed.

[Anonymous No.2741862]

>>2741854
>implying that solar power is practical

[Anonymous No.2741868]

>>2741862
Solar power is practical for certain applications when applied correctly, but I don't think the German's quite understand that.

[Anonymous No.2741869]

The real question is how much is Germany paying for France's nuclear-generated power?

[Anonymous No.2741882]

>>2741845

Germans are actually nice people - Austrians are the racists.

[Anonymous No.2741884]

>>2741869
However much the French want them to pay, and they don't have much choice.

[Anonymous No.2741929]

Germany = France's bitch from now on?

Oh how the tables have turned.

[Anonymous No.2742254]

>>2741709
Space-based solar power will take even longer than fusion to become viable.

Right now, the energy required to put solar panels into space is several orders of magnitude greater than they could ever generate.

With recent events, ground-based solar power is looking up. Public opinion regarding nuclear power just got a shitload worse, while several sunny North-African countries seem likely to become safer targets for investment.

[Anonymous No.2742260]

>>2742254
>Public opinion regarding nuclear power just got a shitload worse,

Its disgusting that matters in the slightest, I fail to see why idiots should be considered when making important choices like what power sources to use.

[Anonymous No.2742267]

>be german
>be pro-nuclear
>HURRRR BUT ITS SO DANGEROUS
>No it isn't
>YES IT IS LOOK AT FUKUSHIMA AND CHERNOBYL
>One was run by lazy russians and the other was hit by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and a tsunami,both very unlikely too happen again
>BUT SOLAR POWER IS SAFER
>Look at the deaths per tWh,faggot
>MOTE DERPING
I hate germany.

[Anonymous No.2742273]

>>2742267
More*

[Anonymous No.2742437]

>>2742267
>deaths per tWh

This must be the stupidest thing to come out of the Nuclear Power Love Camp ever.

[Anonymous No.2742442]

>>2742437
Why?

[Anonymous No.2742457]

>>2742442
First, for any non-mainstream energy source the sample is simply too low and random to allow any valid comparison.

Second, they still need to manipulate data to make nuclear power look good. Yeah, let's just count 30 deaths in Chernobyl disaster and ignore the thousands of people who died due to contamination.

[Anonymous No.2742460]

>>2742437
What? Facts not good enough for you?

Well, I can spin a fantasy for you, where the nuclear plants run on pink cotton candy and nuclear waste radiates love and harmony. Coal plants are literal plants with cerulean leaves, lovingly gathered by fairies to power their tiny mushroom cottages, deep in the heart of the wood.

[Anonymous No.2742489]

>>2742460
Fukken lol'd.

[Anonymous No.2742493]

>>2742457
Looks like they factored all that in.

[Anonymous No.2742497]

>>2742457
>nuclear power
>non-mainstream

Do I even need to attach a reactionpic?

[Anonymous No.2742511]

>>2742457
No they are counting the actual number of deaths even there. But guess what? Nuclear power wins even after we count chernobyl.

Total amount of people killed by nuclear energy is somewhere in the magnitude of 10-100k. Coal kills that amount in a matter of weeks.

If you live close to a coal power plant you actually get more radiation than close to a nuclear plant. And there are other problems with coal. Those other problems are the ones that do the killings.

[Anonymous No.2742514]

You need to test it in the field and on a large scale to make it cost effective, if we didn't have decades of experience with coal power it would cost a lot more than it does now.

[Anonymous No.2742516]

>>2741676
You know the Germans always makes good stuff.

[Lord Fap !h3WDZNERS6 No.2742525]

German here. It's the wrong way. Solar panels are inferior in efficiency to offshore windmill parks. Both in economic, as well as physical regard. We should plaster the north and east sea cost with windmills.

Secondly, there's a north-south problem in the future. We will have a lot of energy production in the north and not much in the south. Especially when the nukes are taken out of order. This means we will have to invest heavily into the power grid. High voltage direct current lines may be a solution.

Thirdly, we need to have storage capacity for the days/weeks/months when solar/wind/water power is not abundant (when the sun don't shines). This will require some form of huge storage capacity for electrical energy. Completely unsolved problem.

[Anonymous No.2742538]

>>2742525
Solution, see:

>>2741884
>>2741929

[Lord Fap !h3WDZNERS6 No.2742543]

>>2742511
That statement, that coal plants emit more radiation than nukes is imho a fucking myth. Until I see several studies underlining this statement, I call bullshit.

[Lord Fap !h3WDZNERS6 No.2742549]

>>2742538
No, getting power from France is not the solution.
On sunny summer days, germany ALREADY creates nearly enough power from renewables to power all of germany. This trend will continue. We do not need more power generation, we need storage capability for the winter.

[Anonymous No.2742561]

>>2742543
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

[Anonymous No.2742562]

>>2742543
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

> A recent report from Oak Ridge National Laboratory concludes that coal power actually results in more radioactivity being released into the environment than nuclear power operation, and that the population effective dose equivalent from radiation from coal plants is 100 times as much as from ideal operation of nuclear plants.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#Comparing_radioactive_waste_to_industrial_toxic_waste

[Anonymous No.2742567]

>>2742543
How about fucking google it:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/780347.html

Coal plant releasing radioactives has been only known for about sixty fucking years, so I'm not surprised you have yet to hear about it.

[Lord Fap !h3WDZNERS6 No.2742569]

>>2742561
Yeah I remember that study. 1978. Wasn't it financed by the nuke industry? Anyway, as I said, several more studies plz.

[Anonymous No.2742572]

>>2742543

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_plant#Radioactive_trace_elements

From there this sums it up:
"It should also be noted that during normal operation, the effective dose equivalent from coal plants is 100 times that from nuclear plants."

[Anonymous No.2742581]

>>2742569
How about try to bring up something other than:
>It sounds bad so i don't believe it
Coal plants take coal that contains radioactive matter
This matter gets burned and spreaded to atmosphere
We have radiation in the air

Nuclear plants take uranium and put it into the reactor
It stays there

This is basic logic. Coal plants don't try to remove the radioactive elements, while nuclear plants take actions in containing it.

[Anonymous No.2742593]

>>2742543
Its bloody obvious when you think about it. Even if you ignore the thousand of deaths coal causes by its use, the mining deaths and the greenhouse gas emissions it still releases more radiation than nuclear.

The bloody things should be banned and replaced with nuclear.

[Anonymous No.2742658]

>>2742525
>Thirdly, we need to have storage capacity for the days/weeks/months when solar/wind/water power is not abundant (when the sun don't shines). This will require some form of huge storage capacity for electrical energy. Completely unsolved problem.

If you want to go to 100% renewable power, then it's a problem. OTOH, so long as we use fossil fuel plants, the more renewable capacity, the less fossil fuel we actually burn.

Nuclear has the opposite problem to renewables: you can't easily adjust output according to demand. Well, you can adjust output by simply not using the power, but it doesn't actually save any money.

We're already getting close to saturation. At night, current nuclear capacity (mainly France's) powers most of western Europe. If we increase nuclear capacity much further, we'll end up with more power than we actually use.

The anti-solar argument that "the sun doesn't shine at night" is a red herring. We don't need any more electricity at night.

Tidal power has the advantage of consistency, i.e. you can know in advance how much power will be available and when. To an extent, you can also use it as storage capacity.

Similarly, with conventional hydro power it's relatively easy to build in storage (reservoirs) and is at least highly predictable in the short term (reservoirs don't suddenly empty of their own accord) and moderately predictable in the longer term, and dovetails reasonably with solar power (you get more sun in summer but less rain).

[Anonymous No.2742772]

>>2742658
Unfortunately tidal power has the same problem as wave power, ie. it's shit.

I mean seriously, it's low-intensity, a lot lower than solar or wind. It requires a lot of infrastructure and equipment for the power produced, the last I heard, it was several times less efficient than any other power source.

Also, it requires a lot of maintenance, making it even more costly.

The most promising proposals have been the buoy-cylinder and the seasnake, and even those are shit. The siphon-turbine isn't even worth the mention.

[Anonymous No.2742791]

>>2742581
C-14 makes up a very small percentage, Uranium is always radioactive.

The amount of radioactive Carbon is VERY minimal

[Anonymous No.2742797]

At least some progress is being made in solar, found this article a while back.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19338-infrared-chlorophyll-could-boost-solar-cells.html

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[Anonymous No.2742832]

>>2742791
Again, since the uranium stays in the plant and the C-14 gets out, the fact still is that nuclear is safer than fossil.

[Anonymous No.2742842]

Nuclear fission and fusion (when that finally does become established) are extremely viable options. Solar power when it's efficiency goes up (which, some kids have been able to do in testing already [90%]) and geothermal is also viable

[Anonymous No.2742861]

>>2742791
>C-14

The C-14 content would be the least of your worries.

Coal contains traces of many heavy radioactive elements, including uranium. Given that coal plants have to burn millions of tons of coal each per year, those trace amounts compound into significant radioactive contamination.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

[Anonymous No.2742865]

Germanfag here. My government, I am disappoint.

[Anonymous No.2742879]

>>2742842
>which, some kids have been able to do in testing already [90%]
>90%

Maximum theoretical efficiency for any material approximately 30%, so we're going to need some [citation needed] on this one.

[Anonymous No.2742881]

The problem with pretty much every "green" energy technology is the advancements necessary to make them viable energy sources would, on their own, solve every energy problem.

So... yea, this type of "hey, heres a buck, give us two kWhs," initiative is pretty much the only way to go. Make private sector spend the money and take the time to figure out a viable business model around solar. Because, apparently, the government couldn't.

[Anonymous No.2742895]

>>2742879

Sure thing bud. Gimme a sec and you'll get it

[Anonymous No.2742904]

>>2742895

Here you go
90% PV panel

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/researchers_claim_new_solar_panel_can_collect_90_sunlight_from
_any_angle
http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/28/caltech-gurus-whip-up-highly-efficient-low-cost-flexible-solar/
http://grantlawrence.blogspot.com/2010/02/solar-cells-breakthrough-150th-cost-90.html

85% Efficient PV panel

http://www.overunity.com/index.php?topic=7995.0
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2010/02/15/2818151.htm
http://www.gizmag.com/researchers-developing-solar-technology-that-works-at-night/8574
http://www.inl.gov/pdfs/nantenna.pdf

[Anonymous No.2742925]

>>2742904
>multi-layer, multi-material panel sandwiches

Clever bastards.

[Anonymous No.2742942]

>>2742904
So yeah, if that and fusion were commercially viable most power issues should be solved. Geothermal is always an option too. It's all safe. Fission is safe too, providing the place isn't covered in graphite, unmonitored and in Russia. Even then, not all that many people died

[Anonymous No.2742956]

>>2741676
it makes people buy solar panels.
people buying solar panels = money for producers.
money to producers = money to developers.
money to developers = new research/development.

and Germany gives a shitload of cash every year to solar research.

[Anonymous No.2742959]

>>2741884
>>2741929
Nah ,everyone is Russian's bitch. Russian gas mothafucker.
That's the alternative to nuclear really. But the people can't deal with those geopolitics. It's too tied with state secrets to try to explain the situation. Just like Gaddafi and his oil.

[Anonymous No.2742963]

>>2742942
Should probably remove Chrenobyl bit. Deaths vary a lot. Nobody knows. I don't know either.

[Anonymous No.2742974]

>>2742963
nobody knows, but all research done so far on long-term effects show that the "thousands" dead thing is complete bullcrap.

[Anonymous No.2742985]

>>2742974

Yeah that's what I thought. I don't think too many died but this is /sci/. If I can't reasonably justify it or don't have proof, then it's not valid

[Anonymous No.2743124]

>>2742963
>>2742974
>>2742985
As was said earlier, it doesn't matter even if you take Chernobyl into account. Nuclear is still safer by the numbers. Fear of nuclear power is a thing of feelings, not of facts.

[Anonymous No.2743138]

Nuclear power is the objectively greatest form of energy.

Fuck everyone who believes anything else.

[Anonymous No.2743206]

I don't think solar panels will ever be able to provide cost effective energy for homes and businesses. It will have many applications for electric cars, electronic devices, and space though.

[Anonymous No.2743305]

>>2742904
>>2742842

Good luck making those solar cells when the rare earth metals they need exist in very small amounts(5000 tons world wide) and nearly all of those rare earth metals are in China.

Guess who is severely curbing their exports of rare earth metals?

Solar cells are cool ideas, but they will never make up more than %30 of the total energy generated. The sun does not always shine, and solar cells' efficiency plummet when not in direct sunlight.

There are some places on earth where the sun shines so little that solar cells will never be viable option for power generation.

[Anonymous No.2744266]

just so you know, cryogen facilities are now being built to operate as batteries to cope with the unreliable availability of solar/wind power. they liquify air when there is a lot of power being generated, then heat it and let it drive turbines when there isn't much power being generated. it's a cheap and simple solution that is extremely clean and can be implimented anywhere.

[Anonymous No.2744578]

>>2743305
Rare earth metals are actually fairly common, but are widely dispersed and found in low concentrations. China is the only country currently producing large amounts of them, but a number of countries are exploring the possibility of starting mining operations.

[Anonymous No.2744595]

>>2744266
Sounds incredibly inefficient.

[Anonymous No.2744599]

>>2744578
a few months back when china was playing around with cuts in rare earth exports, the US announced a huge rare earth find, something like 5-10 years of the entire world supply. sorta just threatening china, like if you don't keep that shit flowing cheap, we'll just start mining it ourselves. the US is set at least on rare earths.

germany, on the other hand, doesn't have shit. those solar panels are the gov'ts investment in rare earths. the day the carbon nanotube rolls of rubberized solar sheets are massed produced, germany will recycle all those panels for a huge profit.

[Anonymous No.2744798]

>>2744599
Sounds like BS to me. If Germany really wanted to invest in rare earth metals they would just get one of their mining companies to set up operation in a 3rd world country.