Fossil Fuels Just Lost the Race Against Renewables

[Anonymous No.7195960]

What do you think, /sci/?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-14/fossil-fuels-just-lost-the-race-against-renewables

[Anonymous No.7195964]

>>7195960
This is very welcome news

[Anonymous No.7195995]

>>7195960
>What do you think, /sci/?
nope.
"adding alternative energy" is just another way of spending money into their own economies. government subsidies can only temporarily hide the true costs involved; it does nothing to make that alternative energy more efficient over the long run.

I'm all for polluting the environment less, but if the government has to PAY you to buy it? Then it isn't that efficient--because if you had to pay all of the costs involved, you would not make that choice with your own money knowing the benefits you would get.

There's lots of examples of this,,, "things only governments do because they are horribly inefficient". The point was to waste money while providing a benefit, not efficiency.

[Anonymous No.7196028]

>>7195960
>Solar, the newest major source of energy in the mix, makes up less than 1 percent of the electricity market today but will be the world’s biggest single source by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency.

What are the chances this is already priced into the market?


As an aside, this guy
>>7195995
is right.

It's just as bad as when people brag about how they get 'free' education (or really anything; roads, healthcare, retirement money etc.) from da gubmint. No you fucking idiot, you're paying for all that shit, one way or another.

[Anonymous No.7196042]

>>7195960
>"renewables"
>base load
Choose one and only one.

Go nuclear or go third world.

[Anonymous No.7196045]

>solar energy
>green
>what is the first law

[Anonymous No.7196129]

>>7195995
Yeah, it's expensive. But fossil fuels as they stand are subsidised as well, not just by plain tax breaks and direct subsidies for fossil fuel companies, but by the plain fact that Pigovian taxes are not being applied to carbon emissions, which are a huge negative externality for all of us.

[Anonymous No.7196155]

>>7196028
>hurr durr I can't understand the concept of free at the point of use

[Onononos No.7196239]

>>7195995
That's exactly the role of gov.
Individual humans or companies are too short sighted and chose the option which is instantly more profitable. It doesn't make it the better one.

Stripping down the financial mechanisms, we simply pay more for less efficient energy sources. And this is good. We are trying not to end up in wasteland or total energy crisis.

We are trying. I'm not going to argue about how green or how renewable energy sources really are.

[Anonymous No.7196245]

>>7195960
>What do you think, /sci/?
We hear this every few months, it's empty hype and wrong.

[Anonymous No.7196247]

>>7196045
Heat supplied to a system may raise its internal energy or enable it to do work.

[Anonymous No.7196252]

>>7196042
Solar power is nuclear energy.

Checkmate atheists.

[Anonymous No.7196255]

>>7196239
FINALLY someone who gets it. Pollution needs to be taxed in proportion to the harm it does to our environment in order to provide a financial incentive to move away from dirty power sources.

[Anonymous No.7196256]

>>7196252
And when that reactor goes, we're all fucked.

[Anonymous No.7196261]

>capacity additions
lmao

ok now show us percent of total generation

what a shit graph

[Anonymous No.7196272]

>>7196261
Rate of change is what matters the most when making projections, you dolt.

[Anonymous No.7196280]

>>7195995

this pretty much

the worst part is that due to NRC regulations/paranoia nuclear costs are 10x higher than they would otherwise be

[Anonymous No.7196291]

photo voltaic solar is a really crappy way to get electricity.

i wonder how many years it takes a panel to pay off the carbon of its construction and start making a difference in total emissions.

[Anonymous No.7196323]

>>7196261
>percent of total generation
not much yet

[Anonymous No.7196332]

>>7196272
>Rate of change is what matters the most when making projections

You misunderstood him. The solar additions are added as "max capacity" production values which gives very large numbers, but in absolute values of energy produced it will look a whole lot flatter.

If we install a power source with a max capacity of 1000TW but 0% capacity factor it will be entirely useless practically but we can still make a pretty graph of it.

[Anonymous No.7196464]

Could be the largest resource if people would get behind solar road ways.

[Anonymous No.7196481]

>>7195995
You're missing the point. Taxes and subsidies are economic means of government coercion (without the negative connotation; it's a very common and necessary political tool) in order to incentivize certain actions over others. In other words, the government can encourage growth in alternative energies and reductions in pollution from other energy sources by taxing the pollution and subsidizing the alternative energies, thus giving the alternative energy industry an economic advantage, persuading a heavier reliance on clean energy over dirty energy.

[Anonymous No.7196490]

What the fuck is this chart supposed to mean? They didn't label their axis.

[Anonymous No.7196492]

>>7196464
>solar road ways.
Dumbest shit ever.

>Roads are expensive and solar panels are brittle and need clear optics.
>Lets make roads ten times more expensive and put solar panels in a dirty as shit wear and tear environment with lots of vibrations.

[Anonymous No.7196504]

>>7196492
Try and do some research on it. The people who made the tests for these road ways had to over come those problems and I'm pretty sure they have found some great solutions. Also the roads would be less expensive after installation with all the benefits coming from these road ways. The engineers are going to use recycled items to make them. There would be 3x as much energy available and it would create thousands of job opportunities for many many years.

[Anonymous No.7196506]

>>7196504
The idea is inherently dumb as fucking shit. I don't care whatever fucking number juggling, mental gymnastics or mystery tech you try to employ to justify it. It's one of those colosally stupid ideas made by people that tries to combine two subjects they know nothing about.

[Anonymous No.7196546]

>>7196504
Solar cells are.
>Brittle
>Expensive
>suffer efficiency losses due to surface erosion and dirt that lowers their optic clarity.

Roads are
>subject to being dirty
>subject to surface erosion
>subject to mechanical stress
>supposed to provide good traction for safety
>supposed to be seamless surfaces to provide pleasant driving experiences
>need certain properties for noise reduction
>should be cheap and easy to lay down.

There's simply no sensible way to optimize for both.

Electric safety and wiring alone is quite likely enough to prevent it from ever happening. You'd risk open high voltage circuits or end up with ground connections that cook people, soil and start fires.

[Anonymous No.7196553]

>>7196546
To add: In areas that get snow, the solar panels will get fucked up by plows, road salt, and gravel. And I can see them forming a layer of ice on top making driving incredibly dangerous.

[Anonymous No.7196565]

I can understand if I read this greenshit in some stupid facebook post. Not in /sci/ where at the very least some have STEM degrees or are currently occupied in studies.

Also
>muh solar roads
>seriously
WHAT?!

[Anonymous No.7196576]

>>7196291
15 to 25 for rentability (average life expectancy 20 years). The process of making solar panel isn't too much co2 producing. It just reject tons of metals and shit on river. In china. So, who care ?

[Anonymous No.7196578]

Well, puts me in mind of those musical roads, remember?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ixg77Gp0EU

[Anonymous No.7196579]

>>7196553
They don't have snow problems, they're heated.

[Anonymous No.7196592]

>>7195960
>What do you think, /sci/?

That this is exactly the kind of shit holding back our nuclear energy capacity and improvement.

[Anonymous No.7196597]

>>7196579
Say that to a place where snow happens all year round or happens so often that the rate of heat transfer could not keep up.

[Anonymous No.7196613]

>>7196579
>they're heated.
How?
It's a winter night and there's heavy snowfall.

[Anonymous No.7196625]

worlds-first-solar-road-opens-in-the-netherlands
2,000 cyclists on an average day

(I want my old captcha back)

[Anonymous No.7196628]

>>7196625
Cycling I could see but normal roads no.

[Anonymous No.7196650]

>>7195995
>government subsidies can only temporarily hide the true costs involved; it does nothing to make that alternative energy more efficient over the long run.
This is a pretty ignorant claim. If nothing else, subsidies help production to reach a more economical scale.

Besides, they're also subsidizing research into technology that makes alternative energy more efficient over the long run.

[Anonymous No.7196652]

>>7196625
>70-metre path
>€3m
>The surface of the road has been treated with a special non-adhesive coating
that non adhesive coating seems to do jack shit.

I'd really like to see how much electricity that piece of shit produces.

Also given the picture it's less than 70x2 = 140m^2 of surface.

So it cost 21 000€ per square meter.
At an an impossibly high 50% conversion rate(500W/m^2) and 20% capacity factor. With a generously ridiculous electricity price of 50cent per kWh it would take 49 years for it to pay for itself.

[Anonymous No.7196656]

>>7196625
>>7196652
Netherlands, ladies and gentlemen. So progressive.

[Anonymous No.7196666]

>>7196546
>Solar cells are.
>>Brittle
Not all of them.

>>Expensive
Less and less so, dramatically over time, with advancing production technology and facilities.

You have a pretty limited sense of what PV panels are, and how the technology is advancing and diversifying.

>>suffer efficiency losses due to surface erosion and dirt that lowers their optic clarity.
One out of three ain't good. And this isn't even a major concern.

I agree that roads are one of the last places we should put solar collectors. But that doesn't mean they're not on the list. Roofing, siding, window shades, decks, walkways, are all better places than roads, but at some point roads will make sense.

[OP No.7196674]

>>7196666
nice quads

[Anonymous No.7196675]

>>7196652
You understand that this is basically a science experiment, right?

It's like you're looking at the cost of a hand-built prototype car, and saying, "Cars will never be economical."

[Anonymous No.7196678]

>>7196652
yep, yurocucks are THAT stupid

[Anonymous No.7196685]

>>7196652
>>7196656
Given real world numbers of electricity production and price it would've probably been a better investment to pay a third world sub-poverty person 1€ per kW/h he can crank out from a manual generator

.>>7196666
>Not all of them.
Crystalline are, the other ones all have other drawbacks, either low durability or very low conversion values.

>You have a pretty limited sense of what PV panels are
Because I call out a bullshit idee for being bullshit I'm clueless about PV? The reason I can call it bullshit is because I know about PV.

>at some point roads will make sense.
Most likely not, pretty much every other surface area is better to install PV on and that would be enough to saturate the demand many times over.

>>7196675
>this is basically a science experiment, right?
A very bad and expensive one if paid with public money(which it probably is because europ). When a back of the napkin calculation shows it's a total economic disaster you're doing something wrong.

[Anonymous No.7196700]

>>7196685
>Because I call out a bullshit idee for being bullshit I'm clueless about PV? The reason I can call it bullshit is because I know about PV.
Pfft. You declared PV to be expensive and brittle like those are laws of nature. It's like you're hopping up and down waving a banner with, "I don't know what I'm talking about!" on it.

>that would be enough to saturate the demand many times over.
Saturate the demand for energy? Are you even listening to yourself?

>When a back of the napkin calculation shows it's a total economic disaster
Oh, it's a total economic disaster now, for the Netherlands to spend a couple million euros on an energy technology experiment? I had no idea that the Netherlands was so desperately poor.

You didn't even attempt to factor in its value as a high-quality paved bike path.

[Anonymous No.7196711]

>>7196272
of course it is. but that graph isn't directly displaying rate of change either.

if rate of change is the important property, rate of change should be graphed, not total capacity or additions to capacity.

[Anonymous No.7196715]

>>7196504
>Try and do some research on it.
If you'd done the research you'd know the idea is garbage.

We have. We know. It is.

[Anonymous No.7196744]

More energy falls on the Earth from sunlight in one day than was available from all of the fossil fuels that were in the ground before we started digging them up.

Solar power desalinates all of our fresh water that falls as rain, it powers all of the rivers, all the ocean currents, all the wind, every hurricane, and all life on Earth.

Fuck the environmental advantages. As we get good at solar power, it's going to increase the availability of power over what we have now, in similar proportion to the increase of power we gained between when we did everything with our own muscles compared to now.

[Anonymous No.7196755]

Fusion reactors are the most likely to replace fossil fuels.

Since the tech is so complicated the big energy conglomerates can still maintain a monopoly on energy and it's available regardless of location and weather.

[Anonymous No.7196760]

>>7196755
>Since the tech is so complicated the big energy conglomerates can still maintain a monopoly
I don't know if you've noticed, but solar power is enjoying quite a lot of political support.

The "big energy conglomerates" don't have the kind of pull you're implying, and even if solar wasn't politically popular, it would be hard to hold back technology that's so easy to experiment with in small, inexpensive labs.

[Anonymous No.7196771]

>>7196760
Okay forget the monopoly thing, the point is, it's like nuclear but without the need for radioactive waste.

[Anonymous No.7196785]

>>7196700
>Saturate the demand for energy? Are you even listening to yourself?

It would saturate demand for renewable energy which is a bit different. But given free storage it would easily saturate all other energy demands too without having to attempt solar roads. Rooftops, celings, utility poles, roadsides, empty fields, disused lots.
Lots of space to put a solar panel where it won't be run over by cars on a daily basis.

>You didn't even attempt to factor in its value as a high-quality paved bike path.

You don't even attempt to hide how oblivious and biased you are.

[Anonymous No.7196789]

>>7196771
You mean with less radioactive waste. Neutron activation is practically unavoidable, and tritium is radioactive.

But yes, other than that, it's like nuclear power: expensive, dangerous, and hopelessly entangled with nuclear weapon proliferation concerns.

That's assuming we can make it work at all.

[Anonymous No.7196794]

I thought the solar panel cost decreases would stop last year when they got under $1/Watt, but now they're $0.5/watt.

http://www.greenworldinvestor.com/2015/03/23/jinko-solar-to-expand-capacity-in-malaysia/

>The company’s cost of production is below 50 cents per watt currently.

[Anonymous No.7196796]

>>7195995
>what is the tragedy of the commons

[Anonymous No.7196798]

>>7196785
>it would easily saturate all other energy demands too
...because if more power becomes available, people won't think of ways to use it?

You're just a Thunderf00t fanboy who mistakes angry repetition of talking points for thorough reasoning.

[Anonymous No.7196799]

>>7196755
>Fusion reactors are the most likely to replace fossil fuels.

Fission is growing worldwide too and there's a lot of experimental reactor tech that could be very competitive.

It also have the advantage that we know it works on a commercial scale.

[Anonymous No.7196802]

>>7196796
So, who's acting in their own self-interest? The government or the corporations?

[Anonymous No.7196804]

I'm extremely concerned about the increasing use of solar power. The Sun is the only Sun we have, what happens when we use all its power too quickly and it burns out? Then we won't be able to grow crops without lamps. It's probably only a decade before we're at peak solar.

[Anonymous No.7196805]

>>7196798
Market dynamics. PV isn't free even if electricity is so severely overproduced that it virtually is.

take your youtube memes back to /pol/ or whereever you find them.

[Anonymous No.7196809]

>>7196804
Yeah it's scary how fast we're depleting our main resource reserves.

[Anonymous No.7196810]

>>7196802
>implying there's a significant difference
Sure, you can vote for whoever you want but they're still going to get kickbacks for funding something.

[Anonymous No.7196816]

The thing that concerns me is that this is simply the rate of new adoption, and doesn't signify a decrease in fossil fuel use, only a decline in the rate of increase. Actually, it doesn't even signify that. If you look at the numbers, they *predict* a decline in the rate of increase, but so far, there has been a steady increase in fossil fuel usage every year, it's simply that renewables have grown even faster. It's kind of like hearing "You're quite lucky today! There are 10 more people here than yesterday that are going to rape you, but 20 more people who aren't! And tomorrow, we expect there will only be an additional 5 people raping you!" Well, it's better than the "alternative," but you still have dozens of people raping you every day.

[Anonymous No.7196822]

>>7196804
>only sun we have
>what are other solar systems

[Anonymous No.7196824]

>>7196802
The point I was making is that it's in nobody's individual interest (people, corporations, or otherwise) to invest in renewable energy since it's considerably more expensive, and you alone will not avoid catastrophe by adopting it; but it is certainly within the collective's interest to adopt renewables. Hence the need for government funding. It's literally the textbook example of tragedy of the commons - you're polluting the damn air.

[Anonymous No.7196828]

>>7196809
estimated reserves are voluntarily provided numbers with no oversight or doublechecking

the real reserve amount could be anywhere between that number and zero, and we have no way of knowing

[Anonymous No.7196834]

>>7196810
>Implying that altruism is real.
Everyone works for a reward, only the mentally ill work for no reward.

Regardless implementation will produce avenues that facilitate improvement of technology and further.

I don't know why we don't invest into nuclear besides.
>Muh Churnoble
>Muh tree mile

We should use more of these technologies. The United States used to be the most progressing nation there was, first submarines, aerial reconnaissance and flight.

[Anonymous No.7196835]

>>7196805
>PV isn't free
Technology's going to keep advancing. Energy is falling from the sky. Solar collectors can be made from common materials. As the technology advances, the cost of solar collectors is therefore going to fall toward the cost of the energy to transform common materials into solar collectors. But the solar collectors you produce will be able to pay that energy cost. The cheaper they make energy, the cheaper they'll be to make.

We will be able to cover an arbitrary amount of surface area in solar collectors, in much the same way that plants covered the Earth without anyone having to spend a dime.

So the cost of setting up solar collectors is going to fall arbitrarily close to the cost of allocating that surface area for that use. As long as we value the energy from solar collectors over having an area free from solar collectors, we'll put solar collectors over it.

Right now, it takes a few years for PV panels to pay the energy cost of their manufacture. We'll get to the stage where it will only take weeks, and then we're going to put that shit on everything.

[Anonymous No.7196868]

>>7196824
>What is supply makes its own demand?

[Anonymous No.7196873]

>>7196824
>it's in nobody's individual interest (people, corporations, or otherwise) to invest in renewable energy since it's considerably more expensive
Not really true.

Solar and wind have always had valid niche applications, like small amounts of power for remote locations and satellites, and as technology has advanced while fossil fuels eventually stopped getting cheaper, those niches have been growing faster and faster.

Now there are hot, sunny places where even without subsidies, it would make sense to put a limited area of PV panels on rooftops, to offset the cost of air conditioning, even though grid power is available.

Without subsidies, the niches would keep growing naturally. The subsidies promote investment in the technology before it's mature enough to win on cost, which might be worthwhile or it might not be, depending on how you rate the externalities.

[Anonymous No.7196887]

>>7196835
Installation, power electronics, maintenance and materials and manufacturing have some costs that are hard to squeeze.

>We'll get to the stage where it will only take weeks, and then we're going to put that shit on everything.

Sure, but when? We'll also have robots doing our chores and strong AI and universal disease cures eventually but postulating about the deep future isn't helping us now or in our lifetimes.

[Anonymous No.7196914]

All this means is that governments have massively increased solar subsidies in recent years.

Also what's with all the shilling for solar when wind is literally better in every way?

[Anonymous No.7196925]

>>7196804

Unlike the White Man, the Plains Indians used every part of the photosphere.

[Anonymous No.7196928]

>>7196914
There are more good places to put solar. Solar has more potential to be developed. Not everybody likes looking at wind turbines.

[Anonymous No.7196930]

>>7196928
>Not everybody likes looking at wind turbines.
That is the most pitiful excuse ever.

Wind accounted for more than 50% of added US capacity last year, and accounts for 5% of US generation in total. Solar accounts for a pitiful .3%, and would require a massive overhaul of the grid system to take off (which will not happen).

[Anonymous No.7196931]

>>7196914
Blocking the wind will cause problems for the Earth.

The only reason why it hasn't become apparent to us yet is because wind turbines are so rare.

[Anonymous No.7196936]

>>7196828
It could also be anywhere between that number and the mass of the earth, if you're going to be that obtuse.

[Anonymous No.7196938]

>>7196931
>Blocking the wind will cause problems for the Earth.
Haha
Guess where wind comes from in the first place, champ.

[Anonymous No.7196940]

>>7196834
There's also
>Muh Fuckupshima

[Anonymous No.7196942]

Why is Germany a perfect case study on why large-scale solar will never take off?

[Anonymous No.7196943]

>>7196928
>Solar has more potential to be developed.
I mean the technology. Wind is already pretty good. Can't get much better.

Solar can get way better than it currently is. Look at plants, for instance, which can reach energy break-even on their investment in growing leaves in days. That's an example of what's physically possible. But the best we're currently capable of are solar panels which reach break-even in years.

So there's potential for years of fast, exponential improvement, like we've enjoyed with computer technology.

[Anonymous No.7196948]

>>7196931
>>7196938

Heh. Wind turbines cause increased cloudiness, so if there's solar panels/farms downwind of wind farms, the solar panels will be less effective.

[Anonymous No.7196950]

>>7196930
>>Not everybody likes looking at wind turbines.
>That is the most pitiful excuse ever.
This shit matters. Making the landscape ugly is a high cost for energy.

Anyway, why are you focusing on that point, rather than the others?

Wind is better right now, but solar has more potential. Neither of them are really good enough at present that we should be building them out.

[Anonymous No.7196953]

>>7196942
Don't forget that solar shills conveniently "forget" about the millions and millions of metric tons of toxic chemical waste that the production of solar panels (and the batteries they would need for sustainability) produce.

[Anonymous No.7196959]

>>7196835
The easier it is to produce power, the less people will pay for it. Solar panels will never "pay for themselves in weeks".

[Anonymous No.7196960]

>>7196914
The fuck is hydro doing on the nondispatchable side of the chart?

[Anonymous No.7196962]

>>7196959
I believe anon meant in terms of Energy Returned on Energy Invested (ERoEI)

[Anonymous No.7196971]

>>7196960
>As modeled, hydroelectric is assumed to have seasonal storage so that it can be dispatched within a season, but overall operation is limited by resources available by site and season.

[Anonymous No.7196986]

>>7196925
i had to choke myself to stop from laughing out loud.

[Anonymous No.7196990]

>>7196959
The easier it is to produce power, the cheaper the energy will be that's needed to make solar collectors.

And the production and installation technology is going to advance. Today we need a factory with workers and skilled installation crew, costing money, in ten years they may come out of a printer and be deployed by housekeeping robots, consuming only the idle time of things you want to have around for other reasons.

[Anonymous No.7196995]

>>7196868
>supply makes its own demand
only somewhat related but always funny

[Anonymous No.7197000]

>>7196990
"Manufacture Energy" is not the only factor either.

Solar is also inherently nonrenewable until we find something to do with all the toxic waste products it produces.

[Anonymous No.7197004]

>>7196995
You laugh at that, but someday, that shit's all going to be made into batteries.

With sulfur so cheap, people are looking for ways to use it.

[Anonymous No.7197011]

>>7197000
>until we find something to do with all the toxic waste products
Oh, come on. This is just stupid.

Some PV factories are leaking toxic waste because they're in places with no pollution regulation, and they can save some money by being sloppy, not because it's something inherent to the technology.

[Anonymous No.7197018]

>>7197011
Are you or retarded or something?

The problem isn't "leaking" or some shit from a child's coloring book, the problem is the byproducts from their chemical manufacture.

[Anonymous No.7197066]

>>7196936
No it couldn't. We know there's non-oil portions in the Earth, so we know the oil portion can't be the whole Earth's mass.

Try being not-shit at being obtuse.

[Anonymous No.7197080]

>>7197018
>the problem is the byproducts from their chemical manufacture.
Okay then. Be specific. What exact byproducts? Why are they a problem if they aren't being leaked to the environment?

[Anonymous No.7197103]

>>7196804
According to this article, it will take about 900 years until we're using the entire solar output.

http://aleph.se/andart2/megascale/energy-requirements-of-the-singularity/

[Anonymous No.7197109]

>>7197004
I can't wait until I can get me sum lithium-sulfur batteries.

[Anonymous No.7197116]

>>7197066
Your right, I was shit at being obtuse.

[Anonymous No.7197119]

>>7196625
Why

Why not put them over that nasty looking brown patch instead

Fucking retarded

[Anonymous No.7197136]

>>7197109
Lithium-sulfur batteries aren't going to consume pyramids of sulfur, because lithium is too expensive, but things like sodium-sulfur batteries could.

Another example of the type of thing being developed is ORBAT:
http://jes.ecsdl.org/content/161/9/A1371

That's a flow battery (upgrade the capacity just by increasing the size of the tank and adding more fluid, making very large capacities possible at low prices), which uses only hydrocarbons with oxygen and sulfur to store electricity.

There are various such stationary battery concepts, with high capacity per dollar, rather than per kilogram, and many of them use sulfur.

[Anonymous No.7197138]

>>7197119
>that nasty looking brown patch
They just dug up that ground to install the bike path. The grass hasn't grown over it yet.

[Anonymous No.7197139]

>>7197119
but
>muh greenspace

[Anonymous No.7198958]

>>7196953
>and the batteries they would need for sustainability
Do people have some kind of mental block when it comes to flywheels?

[Anonymous No.7199990]

Solar will never be economically viable as a primary power source.
In that regard, nuclear will always be king of the green energy sources.

But solar has serious potential for individual use scenarios for people who both generate and use their own electricity, particularly in remote areas.
Why buy a diesel generator if a few PV cells can do the same thing?

But solar roads are and always have been completely fucking retarded.

Also, we Dyson-Harrop satellite when?

[Anonymous No.7200052]

>>7196155
Ah so if you pay for something at a time other than when you got it, you never actually paid for it at all?
Right that makes sense.

[Anonymous No.7200062]

Greenberg is a pinko bastard

[Anonymous No.7200064]

Wouldn't need to be doing this if there were just less people...

[Anonymous No.7200079]

>>7195960
>The world is now adding more capacity for renewable power each year than coal, natural gas, and oil combined. And there's no going back.
This is what they base their observations upon. However, what they do not take into consideration is the global recession currently occurring, so there is no need for energy investments. The renewables investments are however present because subsidies make it profitable in some cases.

Weird statistics arise in messed up times, I know.

[Anonymous No.7200080]

>>7196256
Guess your engineers need to get good, then.

Besides, the future is fusion!

[Anonymous No.7200159]

>>7200079
>However, what they do not take into consideration is the global recession currently occurring

I can't find anything to indicate this is true.

[Anonymous No.7200313]

>>7196942
That's a storage problem, not a problem of solar power generating capacity.

[Anonymous No.7200330]

>>7200313
And solar isn't viable without those storage systems.

[Anonymous No.7200348]

>>7196481
He's probably a "what are externalities" Republican who believes in the free market.

[Anonymous No.7200353]

>>7195995
Are you implying fossil fuels don't receive massive subsidies?

[Anonymous No.7200363]

>>7196804
0/10 b8 this isnt plebbit m8

[Anonymous No.7200370]

>>7200330
No, solar is viable, as we can see today in numerous applications. *Large scale* solar isn't viable without those storage systems, or - more precise - large scale renewables of the rather unpredictable kind (solar/wind, but not bio mass or hydro), which means beyond a share of about 40%-70% (sources with different opinions) of electricity consumption. This is for short term storage (days and weeks). Long term storage (seasonal storage) doesn't become necessary before 60-80% of electricity consumption comes from renewables. With these numbers in mind, depending on your definition of "large scale", large scale solar power might actually be viable even without additional storage systems. No one ever demanded that all future power come from solar systems.
And of course storage systems are being worked on.

[Anonymous No.7200374]

>>7200370
So why exactly should we use solar instead of nuclear?

Try to answer this question without making any false assumptions based on pop science and general misunderstanding.

[Anonymous No.7200376]

>>7200374
Because people are idiots and think that nuclear is unsafe.

[Anonymous No.7200378]

>>7200370
I think you're correct, I've never really viewed solar as a way of replacing large scale energy production (specifically coal plants), but more as an attractive alternative to domestic energy use. Small scale implementation on homes and buildings is the way to go at the moment. The decentralization of energy production is worth the extra investment in my opinion

[Anonymous No.7200385]

>>7200159
https://www.google.com/search?q=world+gdp+consensus&rlz=1C1_____enSI525SI525&espv=2&biw=1680&bih=959&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=UA4xVYuSE4yvaaytgXA&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ#tbm=isch&q=global+gdp+consensus%C4%91&imgrc=D7XDyMUzZXptNM%253A%3BjR8NVdAnzfWcmM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fjugglingdynamite.com%252Fwp-content%252Fuploads%252F2014%252F04%252FWorld-GDP-2014-consensus.png%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fjugglingdynamite.com%252F2014%252F04%252F25%252Fgrowth-falling-stocks-way-up-what-could-possibly-go-wrong%252F%3B617%3B437

Long story short, the fall in economic growth is believed to be the main culprit for the oil price collapse.

[Anonymous No.7200393]

>>7200385
This link doesn't work for me.

[Anonymous No.7200406]

>>7200374
Because nuclear power plants have rather demanding requirements of cooling water. In France e.g. 60% of surface water consumption is cooling water, which has led to bottlenecks during times of low water availability (summer and winter). Several times shop owners were required to turn off shop window lights. Once even the lighting of the Eiffel Tower had to be turned off. Nuclear power plants being baseload power plants that simply aren't adjustable to varying demands doesn't help either. And of course this also means they can't just be shut down every time production exceeds demands so they have to sell it at firesale prices. It's rather ironic: the French can't even ensure to satisfy it's domestic electricity demands at all times while simultaneously being Europe's biggest electricity exporter.
And of course a catastrophic failure has quite some "different" consequences than solar panels failing. And there's the need to store the dangerous waste for quite a long time.

[Anonymous No.7200415]

>>7200406
>Cooling water
That's why modern plants use non-sustainable reactions. They don't need electronics to slow them down, they need electronics to speed them up. I believe it's actually fairly cheap to completely shut down a lot of modern plant designs, but don't quote me on it.
The amount of cooling required in Gen 3 and 4 plants is almost nothing compared to Gen 1 and 2.

Of course, there are still problems with baseload power consumption, and in that regard it's probably a bit worse than coal, but it's still vastly superior to solar or wind.

>And of course a catastrophic failure has quite some "different" consequences than solar panels failing
Do tell.
What exactly do you consider a "catastropic failure" in a Gen 3 plant to be, and tell me in what way that's possible in a Gen 4 plant.

Pick any plant design, it's okay. I'll wait.

[Anonymous No.7200425]

>>7200415
>unsinkable ship, too cheap to meter

Same old story.

[Anonymous No.7200428]

>>7200425
>I have no reason to be afraid
>But I'm afraid anyway because I don't understand the technology
>They said the Earth would never spontaneously explode, but that sounds like an unsinkable ship!
>Surely, the Earth could explode at any minute!

[Anonymous No.7200436]

>>7200415
>modern plants
Doesn't unvalidate anything I wrote. And without a doubt building new power plants requires huge investment sums. These plants are designed to run 30, 40 or 50 years and have to reap the profits over time precisely because the investment is so high. I'm willing to wager that replacing the entirety of France's nuclear power plants costs more than putting solar panels on every roof and installing enough wind power on top of that to produce the same amount of energy as the nuclear plants do.

>Of course, there are still problems with baseload power consumption, and in that regard it's probably a bit worse than coal, but it's still vastly superior to solar or wind.
Not really. Baseload power plants are simply designed like that. They're designed to be kept running. They're designed to be operated at working temperatures, which in some cases are reached whole weeks after start. This also means every start/shutdown-cycle causes wear and tear in the systems and baseload power plants aren't laid out to deal with lots of those cycles.
In comparison to that you can switch off excess production of wind/solar quite easily.

>What exactly do you consider a "catastropic failure" in a Gen 3 plant to be, and tell me in what way that's possible in a Gen 4 plant.
Okay. Imprecise vocabulary on my part. I refer you to the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale of the IAEA:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_Event_Scale
Now replace "catastrophic failure" with "major accident".

[Anonymous No.7200440]

>>7200436
>Now replace "catastrophic failure" with "major accident".
>"Major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures"
Literally not possible in Gen 4, and so unlikely in Gen 3 that it's not even worth mentioning.

[Anonymous No.7200443]

>>7196744
My nigga. Climbing Kardashev scale is the best thing ever.

[Anonymous No.7200456]

>>7196744
And nuclear plants are powered by other stars' remains. That is what makes them awesome. Though I agree, solar > everything else in the long run.

[Anonymous No.7200459]

>>7200440
Wrong. Your assessment is based on assumptions and thus subject to human error. A bit like the safety of the Fukushima plant. It's safety systems were based on the assumption that noting more serious than a 8.0 on the Richter scale would occur during the lifetime of the plant. Then nature said fuck you assumptions and sent a 9.0.

[Anonymous No.7200461]

>>7200459
Okay then, think of a scenario that can cause a major accident in a Gen 4 plant.

>Pro tip: you can literally blow them up and they still won't release any radioactive material

[Anonymous No.7200465]

>>7200461
How about you show me a working example first?

[Anonymous No.7200466]

>>7200465
>We should never ever build Gen 4 plants because they haven't been built yet!
I don't understand what you're trying to get at here.

[Anonymous No.7200468]

>>7200466
Are you really this stupid?

[Anonymous No.7200472]

>>7200459
An accident that killed no one directly and only slightly elevated the risk of cancer in a small group of people who lived near the plant.

Meanwhile, oil spills occur on a regular basis. Deepwater Horizon killed 11 people directly and continues to affect marine life in the entire Gulf.

[Anonymous No.7200476]

>>7196805
Funny thing about markets, if there is a resource to be used it's inevitable that it will be used.

If there's a surplus of electricity, then yes there will be a down swing on price. However, electricity is so ubiquitous in industry and commerce that a drop in the price of electricity would be good for almost everybody, putting more money in their pockets.

With more money to spend or invest, industries and markets expand. This leads to a higher demand of electricity to run factories and power homes.

The price of electricity is right back where it started but there's more stuff to be had.

[Anonymous No.7200478]

>>7200472
Who here remembers this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Sayano%E2%80%93Shushenskaya_power_station_accident

Compare the amount of media coverage it received compared to Fukushima, and compare their relative effects.

I'm not sure why the media hates nuclear so much, but there's a serious negative spin being placed on it.

[Anonymous No.7200481]

>>7200472
I must confess that I fail to comprehend how pointing to oil spills helps in a comparison between nuclear and solar power.

[Anonymous No.7200507]

>>7200472
How many people of those who were evacuated by the government and those who fled the contaminated area on top of that because they didn't trust the government's announcements have returned by now and how many didn't or won't? What is the estimate of deaths had there not been this exodus? How many square miles of land have failed solar panels or wind turbines rendered unusable to date? How many people had to be evacuated because of failing solar panels or wind turbines and for what duration?

[Anonymous No.7200516]

>>7200428
Shilling like this doesn't convert anyone to you or side. Its /pol/ tier ideological fanboism.

Nuke advocates have been saying the same shit since the birth of the industry.
>Too many safety features for a failure to be possible
>cheaper than any other energy source... Too cheap to meter!

Meanwhile there is still no plan for dealing with the nuclear waste 60 years late. Every nuclear site is just stockpiling it, massively increasing the risk of release in any kind of emergency.

The new nth generation plants are no doubt better, but after 60 years of bullshit propaganda I'm going to remain skeptical. Your insinuations about my bravery and intelligence aren't going to change my mind. If anything it makes me more inclined to ignore any valid points you might have.

[Anonymous No.7200522]

>>7200428
>I have no reason to be afraid
>But I'm afraid anyway because I don't understand the technology
How long do you have to shill so hard before you start believing your own bullshit?

There's a great deal to be afraid of. You're trusting corporations and bureaucrats to never fuck up, and to protect against deliberate sabotage and destruction in wartime.

As Fukushima has demonstrated, stopping the chain reaction doesn't stop heat production and buildup of energy sufficient to defeat containment.

The problem with nuclear power is that you're producing a huge inventory of waste, which can make large areas uninhabitable. One fuck-up, and that's what happens.

[Anonymous No.7200534]

>>7200522
>As Fukushima has demonstrated, stopping the chain reaction doesn't stop heat production and buildup of energy sufficient to defeat containment.
Confirmed for knowing literally nothing about the technology.

If it's not a sustainable reaction, you know how to shut it down?
You just turn it off.
And you know what happens if all of the safety features break?
It just turns itself off.
This is mainly a fourth-gen thing though, so it's still fairly experimental. Third-gen stuff mainly just has top-notch containment measures.

>You're trusting corporations and bureaucrats to never fuck up, and to protect against deliberate sabotage and destruction in wartime.
This is potentially a problem, but nowhere near the potential danger of a hydro plant (for example). This is a problem that can be completely solved by using thorium as a fuel source, once we can get the logistics chain sorted out.

>The problem with nuclear power is that you're producing a huge inventory of waste
Modern plants (note: this is being retrofitted to older Gen 2 plants too) produce very little waste, and a lot of what they do produce is recycled.
This is another problem which can be solved simply by using thorium as a fuel source, though.

[Anonymous No.7200538]

>>7200472
>An accident that killed no one directly and only slightly elevated the risk of cancer in a small group of people who lived near the plant.

Top kek.
You really believe that don't you?

[Anonymous No.7200544]

>>7200538
Fukushima really wasn't that bad.

Chernobyl was a pretty serious balls-up, but Fukushima isn't even in the same ballpark.

[Anonymous No.7200555]

>>7200478
>compare their relative effects.
Okay. Your example caused about 75 workplace deaths, with the loss of some trout, and expensive repairs to the plant required to get it running again.

Fukushima caused about 1600 deaths in the necessary evacuation to prevent a much larger number of deaths, with the permanent abandonment of a town that was home to 15,000 people, and an additional large area of land, and a great deal of very expensive and rather dangerous work required for the plant to stop it from becoming a larger disaster.

Leakage of radioactive material continues.

[Anonymous No.7200563]

>>7200534
>If it's not a sustainable reaction, you know how to shut it down?
>You just turn it off.
...and it goes on producing a significant percentage of its recent peak energy output due to radioactive decay.

Which is, as I previously explained, how Fukushima melted down and blew up its containment, after the fission reaction was stopped.

[Anonymous No.7200565]

>>7200555
>1600 deaths caused by something unspecified that's completely unrelated to the power plant
>There was also a fucking earthquake and tsunami which triggered the evacuation

From the same Wikipedia page which you pulled that information from:
>The World Health Organization indicated that evacuees were exposed to so little radiation that radiation-induced health impacts are likely to be below detectable levels,[18] and that any additional cancer risk from radiation was small—extremely small, for the most part—and chiefly limited to those living closest to the nuclear power plant

>>7200563
>Which is, as I previously explained, how Fukushima melted down and blew up its containment
No, that isn't what made the reactor in Fukushima melt, because Fukushima was a light water reactor that used a self-sustaining reaction.
The explosion wasn't even related to the meltdown, by the way. It was a separate incident that was also caused by the earthquake and tsunami.

Please, learn what you're commenting on before you speak.

[Anonymous No.7200578]

>>7200544
Only because the wind was blowing out to sea. If the wind had been blowing toward Tokyo (which it often does) it would have been a disaster worse than Chernobyl.

And let's not forget that the disaster is ongoing, years later. The cores still haven't been recovered. There are billions of gallons of radioactive water in leaky tanks, and no way to deal with them in the forseable future.

Your religious faith in technology is laughable.

[Anonymous No.7200605]

>>7200565
>There was also a fucking earthquake and tsunami which triggered the evacuation
Uh, no, you stupid shit. That 1600 figure is specifically deaths resulting from the evacuation of 300,000 people from the area threatened by the nuclear disaster.

>evacuees were exposed to so little radiation that
They were evacuated quickly, so they got away before the radioactive material reached them.

Stop trying to pretend that Fukushima didn't kill 1600 people and ruin thousands of other lives.

>No, that isn't what made the reactor in Fukushima melt, because Fukushima was a light water reactor that used a self-sustaining reaction.
>The explosion wasn't even related to the meltdown, by the way. It was a separate incident that was also caused by the earthquake and tsunami.
Oh my fucking god, do some actual research before making claims like this.

They shut down the reactor. Significant amounts of fission were not happening. The tsunami knocked out their backup generator that powered the cooling system, which still needed to run because of the decay heat. Without cooling, the core melted down, and from the molten core there was a build-up of chemical energy (water was split into hydrogen and oxygen) eventually resulting in an explosion which breached containment.

These are the actual facts, which you'd know if you had put any effort into learning about it, rather than just soaking in your nuclear fanboy echo-chamber and rejecting anything that didn't support your preconceptions.

>Please, learn what you're commenting on before you speak.
Holy shit, how can you say something like this while posting such a load of ignorant, stupid garbage?

[Anonymous No.7200624]

hype or not it would be better for our future if it was true. Yes most of this progress is largely the result of government subsidization, but if you are to measure the cost, in terms of direct market value prices politically and environmental, of all of the energy resources involved over the lifetime of those resources and compare that with the money being spent now you'd see a different picture.

We're using cheap readily available energy of the present to subsidize the renewable infrastructure of the future when those sources won't be cheap or readily available.

Compare building solar infrastructure with energy from fossil fuels in 2015 dollars with doing so in 2050 dollars and you'll see why economically this makes a lot more sense.

[Anonymous No.7200634]

>>7200624
The problem with this idea is that the energy cost of solar power isn't constant.

Solar power is an immature technology, undergoing rapid improvement in cost-effectiveness.

While I support solar research, and deployment where it's the most cost-effective or otherwise practical option, rushing to deploy it while it's still expensive is stupid.

[Anonymous No.7200642]

>>7200605
>That 1600 figure is specifically deaths resulting from the evacuation of 300,000 people from the area threatened by the nuclear disaster.

Prematurely evacuating old people in a tsunami struck nation due to fearmongering that you support. The vast majority of people could've stayed, pregnant women might need to leave or relocate but japan isn't exactly a nation of young people so that would've cut down the evacuee number severely.

>The dose would've exceeded the civilian limits!
The civilian limits are very low. Staying months more would not exceed the radiation worker limits and even if those are reached you're still NOT subject to statistical increases in cancer rates until you've exceeded them by a fair margin.

Importing food, water and geiger counters would've been a perfectly viable solution and would've led to less lives ruined and less deaths.

Fukushima is an extreme outlier and for it to fail there was a design error coupled with a massive natural disaster. Modern plants have passive safety features where they can run the coolant loops without power and so on and the risk probability is much much lower. Of course these plants aren't being built because the green lobby is shitting on our power future and then have the fucking gall to cite fukushima as a reason.

This would be like preventing redesign of cars to have crumple zones, airbags and seatbelts and then cite then cite the unsafe nature of cars that you directly contribute to as a reason why they should be banned.


>>7200578
>it would have been a disaster worse than Chernobyl.

No.
Stop the hype and fear mongering.

>This was a hydrogen blowout not chernobyl tire core ejection.
>Tokyo is 300km away.
>Kiev is 170 km away from chernobyl, the Zone is in fact very small.

[Anonymous No.7200651]

>>7200642
>Prematurely evacuating old people in a tsunami struck nation due to fearmongering
Yeah, I should have known you were just going to be shamelessly absurd to the end.

Someone doesn't remain this ignorant in the face of readily-available information without a seriously bad attitude.

[Anonymous No.7200653]

>>7200651
>you
I'm not the same person you fucking tard. But some of us actually know what radiation and radiation safety is.

And it's not the biblical devil with an atheist fedora which is what dumbfuck idiots like you subscribe to.

[Anonymous No.7200656]

>>7200651
You're worse than an SJW drone.
>I can't provide factual data or any reasonable argument so I'll just claim radiation triggers me and demand it to be banned because it hurts my feelings.

You don't know what radiation is, you don't know what a nuclear reactor is, you don't know anything about radiation safety and the physiological effects of radiation, why the fuck do you think your opinion should have any more value than antivaxxers or crystal healing or homeopathy or spirit science or whatever fucking crackpot theory of the month that you can dredge up from the ass-end of the internet?

[Anonymous No.7200657]

>>7200634
cost effectiveness and efficiency of a specific solar tech is not the bottom line though, this is building the infrastructure both technologically and politically that will allow for easier deployment of these technologies.

And it hedges our energy bets as well which people over look. Nothing wrong with redundancies where security is involved.

And governments main interest tends to be security.

And don't forget socially(which translates into political) I live in southern Wv, 15 years ago solar in this area was unheard of and unthinkable as an energy option. This had big consequences politically when the subject of coal companies and environmental concerns were addressed. But now you can find solar installations everywhere. Hell last week I was hiking and came across a house nestled in the woods that had to have had a 10kw array. This makes political in roads when the subject comes up which we need if we're to get proper corporate accountability.

Which is important because the real cost issues are dealt with through taxation of pollution from dirty energy sources which is not punitive but one of indemnity. Corporations sell polluting energy sources and consumers buy them but the environmental damage is off loaded onto society as a whole. Taxation of these energy sources is a way to pay for their total cost.

Which is important part of the cost comparison when considering solar cost effectiveness

[Anonymous No.7200658]

>>7200605
I am just wondering, how do you kill 1600 people during an evacuation? That must be poor bastards in critical condition from hospitals. Probably victims of earthquake and all else. That would make evacuation only partially to blame.

Because come on... the grannies? "Faster you old hag! If you can't run, you deserve to die anyway! Banzai!" They aren't that fragile... mostly.

[Anonymous No.7200663]

>>7200657
>Which is important part of the cost comparison when considering solar cost effectiveness
It puts PV in the shitter once you factor in the cost of the toxic production and the almost as bad-coal power infrastructure that produces the required energy to make cheap PV.

In b4 mental gymnastics.

[Anonymous No.7200672]

>>7200653
>>7200656
Come on, don't start pretending that your claims here are based in fact.

You just heard someplace that there were no confirmed deaths from radiation due to Fukushima, and started posting that factoid around, because it gave you a way to feel superior to the average person, who knows Fukushima was a serious disaster.

Now you're being confronted with the reality that the kind of evacuation necessary to prevent radiation deaths has serious consequences of its own, and you reject that reality, with everything from ludicrous rationalizations to angry name-calling.

This is how the internet accumulates advocates for every position on every issue, no matter how obviously stupid.

[Anonymous No.7200675]

>>7200578

>If the wind had been blowing toward Tokyo (which it often does) it would have been a disaster worse than Chernobyl.

confirmed for being totaly ignorant

please stop commenting
Actual credible estimates put the number of victims from Fukushima radiation at anywhere from zero to low hundreds, depending on the choice of a model. Chernobyl was around hundred times worse, with credible estimates ranging from thousands to tens of thousands of excess deaths.

[Anonymous No.7200678]

>>7200663
but it doesn't, the toxic production of solar is one off localized pollution. No renewable's like fossil fuel have constant wide spread pollution consequences. Not to mention they will simply run out, which is the other reason you need solar because in the end it and nuclear is all you're going to have left.

[Anonymous No.7200679]

>>7200663
Erm no. Western PV producers didn't lose against Western coal infrastructure but against Chinese PV producers, who aren't subject to the same environmental legislation. It's not that we couldn't do it cheaply. It's that the Chinese were even cheaper and because fuck China's rivers, what the hell do we care?

[Anonymous No.7200681]

>>7200672
>Come on, don't start pretending that your claims here are based in fact.
They are. Yours aren't.

>>7200672
>You
Still not the same person you idiot.

>the average person, who knows Fukushima was a serious disaster.
Argument of majority. "god exists becauase muh majorities".
Way to prove yourself a idiot layman.

>muh realities
your opinion is not realiy, post link to studies or gtfo.

>This is how the internet accumulates advocates for every position on every issue, no matter how obviously stupid.
A perfect description of your own post, filled with examples of stupid opinions and flawed reasoning.

>>7200678
>the toxic production of solar is one off localized pollution.
So is the chernobyl disaster.

[Anonymous No.7200682]

>>7200679
>solar is sparkling green and super cheap and sooo good!
>fuck China's rivers, what the hell do we care?

I promised mental gymnastics didn't I?

[Anonymous No.7200687]

>>7200682
Selective perception at its best. I parroted a general abstract market economy mindset, not my personal opinion, because the topic was cost. I explicitely pointed out, that cost competition was not lost against coal. But please do continue reading only what you want to read.

[Anonymous No.7200688]

>>7200682
no mental gymnastics you're simply missing the point. I don't care about some little localized ecological destruction I mean all things considered its bad but not as bad as the global consequences of the burning of fossil fuels. Political and environmental. While the loss of the Chinese river dolphin is tragedy melting of global ice reserves going to be worse.

Once again not to mention the loss of power production when non renewables run out.

[Anonymous No.7200691]

>>7200687
>I parroted
Yep.
Words came out but they were just mindless repetition. The modus operandi of the green lobby.

And now on to the second act where the first act of mental gymnastics are attempted to be justified. I think we have an olympic medalist here

[Anonymous No.7200692]

>>7200688
>melting of global ice reserves going to be worse.

A Good thing we're making PV out of coal power then. We're going to feel so ideologically pleased with our underwater solar farms and be so greateful that we didn't irradiate 0.0000000001% of the by then seafloor with terrible cost-effective nonpolluting nuclear power.

[Anonymous No.7200693]

>>7200691
what? well you're not making arguments anymore just vague accusations and name calling.


So i'm done

[Anonymous No.7200695]

>>7200658
>That would make evacuation only partially to blame.
Here's the deal with nuclear disasters: they are much more likely to happen in conjunction with another disaster. A nuclear reactor is far more likely to suffer a loss of containment during a large-scale earthquake, flood, or war. Which is going to make the consequences of the nuclear disaster much worse, since your ability to handle it will be impaired by the other disaster.

This is what Fukushima woke people up to. This is why many countries started shutting down their nuclear programs in response to it.

The case for trusting nuclear power after Chernobyl had always been, "Well, they screwed things up really badly. We have good people, who will do things properly, so we won't have any disasters."

But then there was this case, where the nuclear power plant was basically being operated in a safe and competent way, in an orderly first-world country, and a natural disaster caused a meltdown and loss of containment anyway. And by great good fortune, most of the fallout was blown out to sea. So there was potential for terrible loss of life, which was averted largely by luck.

"It can't happen here." no longer applied after Fukushima. There is nothing to be done to prevent nuclear disasters as part of another disaster, except to stop using nuclear power.

Fukushima is the second of the three major nuclear disasters. The first was Chernobyl. The third one will be a terrorist or military attack on a power plant. Then we won't have a nuclear power industry anymore.

[Anonymous No.7200700]

>>7200691
Can you please be more manipulative in your quoting and subsequent answering? I need examples of quasi-religious zeal for scientific interest.

[Anonymous No.7200701]

>>7200692
I wasn't arguing against nuclear, but you have to admit the political ramification of anything with that word attached are a lot harder pill to swallow than solar.

[Anonymous No.7200702]

>>7200681
>Still not the same person
"You" can be plural. It was meant to be in this case.

[Anonymous No.7200709]

I notice that someone's still throwing around claims that solar is inherently polluting, but nobody has bothered to answer this:
>>7197080
>>the problem is the byproducts from their chemical manufacture.
>Okay then. Be specific. What exact byproducts? Why are they a problem if they aren't being leaked to the environment?

Any industry can cause pollution, if it's done in a sufficienty sloppy way. There's no reason solar can't be done cleanly.

[Anonymous No.7200713]

>>7200709
The same people complaining about solar being polluting conveniently ignore the fact that fossil fuels are orders of magnitude worse for our planet in the long run.

[Anonymous No.7200714]

>>7200692
One makes the power generating equipment of generation X with the power generating equipment of generation X-1. Well, duh!
How dared our ancestors build the coal economy with the energy of burning wood? How dared our ancestors build the oil economy with the energy of burning coal? How dare we build the renewable energy economy with the energy of burning oil?

[Anonymous No.7200723]

>>7197018
>The problem isn't "leaking" or some shit from a child's coloring book, the problem is the byproducts from their chemical manufacture.

>Complains about all the toxic waste created by solar panel production.

>Owns electronics.

[Anonymous No.7200728]

>>7200693
>i'm done
Good, your opinions were worthless anyway.

>>7200700
>religious zeal
Go ahead and take your own posts for that. I'm not going to even attempt a serious answer to someone who says "muh opinion" in 700 words.

[Anonymous No.7200731]

>>7200695
>ISIS will blow up a coal seam and kill everyone from asthma.

I paraphrased you retarded post into how it would look like if you had a nonzero IQ.

[Anonymous No.7200737]

>>7200714
Alternative energy is like alternative medicine.
>Costs lots of money
>Doesn't work
>Relies on real medicine to step in and save the day and then claim the feat for itself.

[Anonymous No.7200743]

>>7200731
Aer you consciously aware that you're shitposting, or does this somehow sound reasonable in your own head?

[Anonymous No.7200744]

>>7196045
>first law
>thinking the earth is a closed system
>laughing_physicists.bmp

[Anonymous No.7200747]

>>7200737
trolling hard?

[Anonymous No.7200750]

>>7200728
>Go ahead and take your own posts for that
which one?

>I'm not going to even attempt a serious answer
implying you ever did

[Anonymous No.7200754]

>>7200743
I just keep the discussion at your level.

>>7200750
>implying you ever did
I did but your reply was "muh opinions" in 700 words"

[Anonymous No.7200756]

>>7200737
>Guys the two things share a word so they must be the same thing!
>Haha, look at my epic zingers! I'm so witty and funny. Please love me.

[Anonymous No.7200758]

>>7200728
Troll harder.

[Anonymous No.7200760]

>>7200754
where?

[Anonymous No.7200762]

>>7200756
>Someone destroyed my opinion with facts
>meme arrows topkek. Please upvoat if you share my opinion.

[Anonymous No.7200765]

http://solarcraft.com/solar-energy-myths-facts/

[Anonymous No.7200767]

>>7200762
>facts
I don't think you know what that word means.

[Anonymous No.7200769]

>>7200754
So you actually, seriously think that blowing up a nuclear power plant would be an event of similar seriousness to starting a fire in a coal seam?

[Anonymous No.7200773]

>>7200769
I think the point he was making was you could argue that anything is a bad idea because someone might come along and sabotage it.

One story buildings are superior to skyscrapers because more people when die when the terrorists inevitably come to blow them up.

Can't haf nuf'n terrorist gunna come 'n blow ya' up!

[Anonymous No.7200774]

>A PV system meeting half of the electrical needs of a typical household would eliminate approximately half a ton of sulfur dioxide pollution from the air, and 600 lbs. of nitrogen oxides. In contrast, any pollutants produced in the manufacturing process are minimal and largely recycled.

>The National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the United States Department of Energy conclusively demonstrates through research at the National Center for Photovoltaics that Photovoltaic (PV) systems avoid far more carbon dioxide and other pollution through their clean energy production than are introduced by the manufacturing of PV systems.

[Anonymous No.7200783]

>>7200773
It's a question of leverage. A single nuclear disaster can force the abandonment of multiple cities and a thousand square miles of farmland.

[Anonymous No.7200788]

Nuclear reactors aren't off in distant wastelands.

If you're choosing ones to crack open to cause maximum disruption, it's going to be a lot worse than if one goes randomly. Especially if multiple strikes are coordinated, as in 9/11.

[Anonymous No.7200790]

>>7200783

So wouldn't be more logical to argue we need improved safety measures for nuclear tech than to argue that no matter how it is used nuclear power generation is in all cases bad and inevitably leads to mass death even though we have reactors the world over running safely and cleanly with new technology further improving safety and environmental efficiency?

[Anonymous No.7200795]

Isn't this good news? Why go Fossil Fuels when renewable resources are a much better idea? I'd rather go this route then take care of the coming problems that come with the renewable resources.

[Anonymous No.7200800]

>>7200769
>>7200783
You can't just walk in and press the self destruction button of a nuclear powerstation.

Even savages like ISIS attack oilfields with intent to capture, not destroy. And if you gather enough explosives to effectively attack the structure from the outside then an attack on civilian or goverment buildings would be much more effective in terms of death toll and publicity.

>>7200788
>nukepills.com
seriously. why don't you link naturalnews with a cupon for 50% off on homepathic solutions next time?

>multiple strikes are coordinated, as in 9/11.
A passenger jet striking a reactor building will strip the paint off it and make sensationalist media shit their pants of joy. The reactor itself could run through it but will probably go into automatic shutdown.

[Anonymous No.7200801]

>>7200790

Good luck with that when Tornadoes, terrorist, and Earthquakes are only a day away from destroying all those safety measures and killing off humans with death or cancer and potentially stealing multiple cities.

[Anonymous No.7200810]

>>7200790
>to argue that no matter how it is used nuclear power generation is in all cases bad and inevitably leads to mass death
If you were serious about discussing this rationally, you wouldn't try an absurd strawman like this.

[Anonymous No.7200817]

>>7200800
>A passenger jet striking a reactor building
Oh for fuck sake. Always, always, always pull the discussion off on a tangent, right? Never attempt to understand what is actually being said, when you can pretend that someone you're arguing with is saying something stupid?

You are such trash.

I was obviously talking about how a new kind of attack can suddenly appear as a coordinated strike at multiple locations at once.

[Anonymous No.7200821]

>>7200801
>Tornadoes
Won't do shit.

>Earthquakes
Not everywhere is a fault zone but even so seismic hardening is in place. Fukushima shut down without problem when the earthquake triggered. The failure was that the shutdown reactor of the fukushima variety
>needs power to circulate cooling
>had groundlevel diesel generators
>the tsunami seawall wasn't up to its job.

>terrorist
Would have an easier time with any soft target. Powerstations have secure doors, in the US they have armed guards. several safety features and exterior building are hardened to take a lot of shit from the outside and the inside.

You might as well put on the storytelling hat and claim east coast hurricanes could be so powerful they push the atlantic ocean all the way up to Alaska. Baseless fucking fear mongering as expected from a green zombie.

[Anonymous No.7200833]

>>7200817
>I was obviously talking about how a new kind of attack can suddenly appear as a coordinated strike at multiple locations at once.
Don't use "Like 9/11" as a comparison then you fuckwit.

>new kind of attack
ISIS with UFOs and deathrays? Hypotethical bias attacks by Gaia herself?
Jihad John with a portable nuke would do more harm at white house than against a nuclear reactor.

Stop cooking up bullshit scenarios because your hysteric anti-nuclear bias, you don't even know what the fuck radiation even is so just shut the fuck up and go pray to the rainbow warrior or whatever your cult demands of you.

[Anonymous No.7200844]

Why are people advocating nuclear over renewable resources like Solar? I'd rather have solar and build upon new technology to advance that.

[Anonymous No.7200861]

>>7200844
>Why are people advocating baseload power that's always availible at $0.05 /kWh instead of randomly availible energy at $1/kWh

Dunno, probably have something to with wanting to maintain a civilized society with industry and comfortable living. Maybe we can send the bills to Ideology and he pays it for us though?

[Anonymous No.7200872]

>>7200861

Except that nuclear will eventually run out. Why not go straight to renewable which will eventually become cheaper in the long haul due to being renewable.

[Anonymous No.7200878]

>>7200821
>Powerstations have secure doors, in the US they have armed guards. several safety features and exterior building are hardened to take a lot of shit from the outside and the inside.
...and all of that is an obstacle to a successful attack. But if you think it's a guarantee that there will never be a successful attack, you're delusional.

The WTC towers were designed to survive aircraft collision, and fire. They fell anyway.

Organizations can be inflitrated. Insiders can be recruited. Oversights can be discovered. Weakness can be found.

[Anonymous No.7200883]

>>7200872
Nuclear won't really run out anytime soon. We already have practical technology for seawater extraction.

[Anonymous No.7200888]

I want every country to be independent of each other when it comes to energy. Might as well go renewable like solar. If we go fossil fuels/nuclear, then everyone will still be dependent of each other when trying to import things like uranium.

[Anonymous No.7200891]

>>7200800
Weren't they claiming before 9/11 that airliners crashing into skyscrapers couldn't make them collapse?

[Anonymous No.7200893]

>>7200883

The point is that it still will run out. Just because nuclear is cheaper in the short term does not mean it's a good idea to adopt.

[Anonymous No.7200896]

>>7196045
>implying emotions can't create energy
Get educated, Homurafeg.

[Anonymous No.7200897]

>>7196028
How on earth can you think this guy is right? >>7195995

have either of you ever picked up an economics book in your life? "it does nothing to make alternative energy more efficient over the long run"
... mate do you have any clue about how industries operate?
Subsidies DRIVE investment and R&D in manufacturing, efficiency, installation costs and maintenance.

[Anonymous No.7200908]

>>7200893
>The point is that it still will run out.
The sun will also run out.

[Anonymous No.7200916]

>>7200908

In about 10+ billion years. What's the timestamp for nuclear? 100-200 years?

[Anonymous No.7200939]

>>7200916
See? You had absolutely no idea. You just pulled a number out of the air, that suits your preconceptions.

Here's the deal with the nuclear fuel supply: the trace uranium and thorium content of average soil means it has more useful energy, pound for pound, than coal. Dig down to granite, and it's more like ten times the energy, pound for pound, available from coal. The continental plates are largely made of granite.

It would take millions of years to run out of fission fuel. Which gives us some time to get good at fusion.

[Anonymous No.7201225]

Popular myths surrounding Germany's energy transition debunked:
http://energytransition.de/2013/08/energiewende-separating-fact-from-fiction/

[Anonymous No.7201259]

>>7200939
>Here's the deal with the nuclear fuel supply: the trace uranium and thorium content of average soil means it has more useful energy, pound for pound, than coal. Dig down to granite, and it's more like ten times the energy, pound for pound, available from coal. The continental plates are largely made of granite.

You can extract uranium from seawater at 300 dollars per kilo, and if we had some ham, we could have some ham and eggs, if we had some eggs.

[Anonymous No.7201268]

for anyone not interested in visiting that shit website:

The race for renewable energy has passed a turning point. The world is now adding more capacity for renewable power each year than coal, natural gas, and oil combined. And there's no going back.

The shift occurred in 2013, when the world added 143 gigawatts of renewable electricity capacity, compared with 141 gigawatts in new plants that burn fossil fuels, according to an analysis presented Tuesday at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance annual summit in New York. The shift will continue to accelerate, and by 2030 more than four times as much renewable capacity will be added.

"The electricity system is shifting to clean,'' Michael Liebreich, founder of BNEF, said in his keynote address. "Despite the change in oil and gas prices there is going to be a substantial buildout of renewable energy that is likely to be an order of magnitude larger than the buildout of coal and gas."
The Beginning of the End

Power generation capacity additions (GW)
Bloomberg New Energy Finance

>see picture 1
The price of wind and solar power continues to plummet, and is now on par or cheaper than grid electricity in many areas of the world. Solar, the newest major source of energy in the mix, makes up less than 1 percent of the electricity market today but could be the world’s biggest single source by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency.

The question is no longer if the world will transition to cleaner energy, but how long it will take. In the chart below, BNEF forecasts the billions of dollars that need to be invested each year in order to avoid the most severe consequences of climate change, represented by a benchmark increase of more than 2 degrees Celsius.

>see picture 2
The blue lines are what's needed, in billions; the red lines show what's actually being spent. Since the financial crisis, funding has fallen well short of the target, according to BNEF.

[Anonymous No.7201269]

>>7201259
I have no idea what you're trying to say here.

More energy can be extracted from 1 kg of uranium than from 3,000 tons of coal. Even if you're not using breeder reactors, it's still ends up being equivalent to over 20 tons of coal.

[Anonymous No.7201362]

>>7200385
The fall in growth is production led by the Saudis in order to combat the shale-oil being produced in America.

[Anonymous No.7201369]

>>7201268
I don't see how anyone can argue with this.

It doesn't matter if it is being subsidized or not, future demand for renewables is going to outstrip future demand for fossil fuels. There is no reason to believe that we are going to willingly go back to fossil fuels. The only question is going to be whether or not we are going to accept nuclear power in the future.

[Anonymous No.7201389]

>>7196789
>expensive, dangerous, and hopelessly entangled with nuclear weapon proliferation concerns

It is not expensive nor dangerous, the research maybe so, but considering that its main fuel is hydrogen isotopes, i doubt its something that isnt worth considering. Also, there have been tons of sanctions on nuclear weaponry if youve picked up a news paper the past 40 years. More and more countries are abandoning their weapons to leave them in stockpiles

[Anonymous No.7201404]

>>7201369
>I don't see how anyone can argue with this.
With what?

The "fossil fuels just lost the race against renewables" headline?

How about by questioning those figures?
>The shift occurred in 2013, when the world added 143 gigawatts of renewable electricity capacity, compared with 141 gigawatts in new plants that burn fossil fuels
Is that 143 vs. 141 Gw average output, or from just adding together all of the peak outputs?

Because one watt of peak capacity from wind or solar is worth a lot less than one watt of peak capacity from a conventional power plant.

[Anonymous No.7201421]

>>7195960
Do you really believe in this hogwash?

The graphs for reneweables won't scale exponentially or even linearlly as time goes on. We'll eventually run out of the rare materials required for the circuits and photovoltaics and then what will we do? We'll be fucked. Things can't die to replace them as with fossil fuels.

The graph also doesn't take into account the massive gains in fossil fuels that will come from Deep Ocean Drilling, Fracking, and Shale exploitation, which has already risen to become the #1 contributor to economies in places like Texas and Alaska. Not to mention with the sanctions on Iran lifted, they will be pumping out millions of barrels of oil to the Western world soon, and we don't even know how much oil is in sites in the Sahara. Saudi & Venezulean oil will last us at least another 100 years. No need to panic.

Be realistic here, Big Oil is here to stay and will eclipse renewables in a few years, it simply has the energy density the modern world requires, come back when PVs can regularly boast an efficiency of 30%+. That's less than an average heat engine lel. You can see why rewewables are struggling with that kind of poor efficiency.

[Anonymous No.7201431]

>>7201421
>We'll eventually run out of the rare materials required for the circuits and photovoltaics
You can't be serious.

[Anonymous No.7201436]

>>7201421
http://cleantechnica.com/2014/12/10/australian-team-sets-new-solar-pv-efficiency-record/

We're up to 46% now last time I checked.

[Anonymous No.7201446]

>>7201431
>Helium will last forever!
>Indium will last forever!
>Gold will last forever!
>Antimony will last forever!
>Lead will last forever!
>Silicon will last forever!

If you think about it in terms like this, fossil fuels are the real renewable resource here, whereas solar cells etc will contribute to wasting precious metals essential for technology. Better start melting down your grandad's jewelry cache because we'll be needing that gold eventually

http://www.visualcapitalist.com/forecast-when-well-run-out-of-each-metal/

Antimony, Lead, and Indium are expected to run out before the next century.

[Anonymous No.7201456]

>>7201446
We'll be mining asteroids before we run out of any of these things

[Anonymous No.7201462]

>>7201456
Or we could, you know, reuse the metal that's been mined.

[Anonymous No.7201471]

>>7201446
>Silicon will last forever!
Silicon is the second most abundant element in the Earth's crust, after oxygen.

Anyway, none of those elements are actually required for PV. Not even silicon. One of the ways solar power is getting cheaper quickly is by reducing the need for valuable materials.

We also are continually making new resources exploitable as our technology advances.

[Anonymous No.7201482]

>>7201446
>http://www.visualcapitalist.com/forecast-when-well-run-out-of-each-metal/
>When we will “run out” of each mineral in this chart is based on current reserves and prices. If the gold price doubles, then suddenly it is economic to mine more.
>2. This chart is a reminder that something has to give. Either prices are going to have to go up, or new amazing discoveries have to be made to keep prices down.
None of those resources are actually going to "run out".

They're just saying that if the mining technology doesn't get better, the price will have to go up.

[Anonymous No.7201492]

>>7201482
nothing will ever run out it's just that the last gramme will cost a billion dollars

[Anonymous No.7201506]

>>7201492
We're never going to get to that "last gram".

We're just getting started with this whole technology thing. Our stuff is going to get more and more recyclable.

It's the same thing that life went through. Life started out eating chemical energy just laying about, and spitting out waste that it had no way to recycle. When photosynthesis started, the oxygen killed almost everything off.

Now something can't be dead for ten minutes without something trying to eat it, and there's something eager to draw in whatever anything spits out.

[Anonymous No.7201551]

>>7196464
>>7196504
>there are people still ranting about this meme technology

It's bullshit and it won't work

>Try and do some research on it

I have, it's not feasible and the people who started the project are desparate because they put all their eggs in one basket and they are lying to people to garner support.

[Anonymous No.7201592]

>>7201269
>I have no idea what you're trying to say here.

You're talking about a technology that doesn't exist, and might not ever exist.

>Even if you're not using breeder reactors, it's still ends up being equivalent to over 20 tons of coal.

I can buy 1250000000 BTU equivalent of uranium for the same price as 13000000 BTU equivalent of coal.

[Anonymous No.7201615]

>>7201592
>>I have no idea what you're trying to say here.
>You're talking about a technology that doesn't exist, and might not ever exist.
I have no idea what you're trying to say here.

Which technology, specifically?

>I can buy 1,250,000,000 BTU equivalent of uranium for the same price as 13,000,000 BTU equivalent of coal.
I have no idea where these figures are supposed to have come from, or what relevance they are supposed to have to the discussion. Today's prices (where?), and the efficiency of today's reactors (which ones?), have little to do with the question of how long the Earth's nuclear fuel supply can last us.

Also: use floor apostrophes like a civilized person.

[Anonymous No.7201730]

>>7200891
They can't.

Not even a 9/11 truther, but there were clearly some kind of demolition charges placed inside those buildings.
It just seems far more plausible that they were placed there by the people who flew planes into them rather than the government that's too incompetent to even stay out of bankruptcy.

[Anonymous No.7201738]

>>7201615
>floor apostrophes
You mean... Commas?

[Anonymous No.7201744]

>>7201730
>Not even a 9/11 truther, but there were clearly some kind of demolition charges placed inside those buildings.
Sorry to break it to you, but this makes you a 9/11 truther.

>>7201738
We've got enough trouble with grammar nazis. Don't need any commanists.

[Anonymous No.7201751]

>>7195960
Who gives a fuck about power creation? You can create power doing pretty much any thing now.

What I want to know is what we are doing about power storage? It is still fucking shit.

[Anonymous No.7201810]

>>7201751
>What I want to know is what we are doing about power storage? It is still fucking shit.
The technology for house batteries is here, and would make a tremendous amount of sense.

Even setting aside solar power, if you only need to charge batteries through the electrical service, rather than meet peak current demand, a much smaller line can be installed. It would end the need for costly peaking generators (commonly adapted from airliner engines). The electric company could also shut down service to do maintenance or repairs, and know that this wouldn't seriously inconvenience people, as long as it was for reasonably short times.

There are two things that aren't here yet:
1) the market pressure for people to install house batteries (electric companies don't reward you with a lower-priced service for making their business easier and cheaper), and
2) an established industry for producing house batteries.

[Anonymous No.7201925]

>>7196675
Not in this way.
This is like a hand built prototype car and futility attempt to drive it through the narrow space of your house and proceed to exclaim that in the future it will be economically viable and convenient to drive automobiles indoors.
Do you see how much dirt it's caked with?
There is no practical solution to a problem like this and space isn't an issue, you shouldn't even consider roads until all other avenues have been exhausted.
Tear them out and put it on a roof where they'll be useful.

[Anonymous No.7201970]

>>7196652
the sad thing is that shit won't even last 1

i mean fucking look at the photo, it's totally covered in dirt and will obviously NEVER run at even 1% capacity.

[Anonymous No.7201972]

>>7200370
I'm curious, do you think using the electricity to generate H3 gas from renewables and then using the H3 for fuel cells is a good idea?

I am aware that there will be a lot of energy loss from this conversion process, but I don't see any magical battery storage technology coming about anytime soon.

[Anonymous No.7201975]

>>7201446
You realize our mining of the Earth barely extends past 5 miles right?

By the time those resources start going sparce we will have true deep mining OPs and extra-planetary operations going as well.

[Anonymous No.7201985]

>>7201615
>I have no idea what you're trying to say here.
>Which technology, specifically?

>>7200939

>the trace uranium and thorium content of average soil means it has more useful energy, pound for pound, than coal. Dig down to granite, and it's more like ten times the energy, pound for pound, available from coal. The continental plates are largely made of granite.

>I have no idea where these figures are supposed to have come from, or what relevance they are supposed to have to the discussion. Today's prices (where?), and the efficiency of today's reactors (which ones?), have little to do with the question of how long the Earth's nuclear fuel supply can last us

We don't have this technology that you're claiming, and we have no idea how to get there.

[Anonymous No.7202056]

>>7201985
Reminds me of gold from seawater bullshit.

[Anonymous No.7202583]

>ITT
>Muh solar power gives very little energy but is in constant development, therefore we must replace all current energy sources to pave the way for our Sun God!
>Nuke is also in constant development and provides a much more substantial amount of energy? Bu.. But.. Terrorists... an.. and.. Fukunobyl! What about all the environment? What.. what is fusion and waste management?

[Anonymous No.7202613]

>>7200878
>>7200695

I like a good prophecy of doom. Nicely posted

[Anonymous No.7202851]

When people talk about rising efficiency, cost, etc., it's missing the point. How much punishment the environment can handle IS NOT dependent on human exchange of monopoly buxs, or "what the market can bare."

[Anonymous No.7202865]

>>7201985
What? To extract it from granite and other ppm sources? Why didn't you just say so?

That's old technology. It's just acid leaching.

1982, lab-scale experiments:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0009254183900207
1963, national-scale practicality assessment:
http://web.ornl.gov/info/reports/1963/3445600230925.pdf

Now, it might cost $10,000/kg, but that's the equivalent of ~3,000 tons of good coal. $3/ton is some pretty cheap coal.

Even at $10,000/kg, fuel isn't a significant cost in a high-burnup breeder reactor.

[Anonymous No.7202881]

>>7201970
>it's totally covered in dirt and will obviously NEVER run at even 1% capacity.
You are apparently looking beside the solar bikeway, at the dirt where they haven't planted grass yet.

I don't know where you get this idea that solar panels must be abolutely pristine. If you look at a road, and you see that it's mostly the color of whatever the road is made of, and not mostly the color of dust, that means most of the light is getting down through the dust, and then back up through the dust again.

The loss of efficiency is not 99% for a little dust on top. That's completely absurd.

[Anonymous No.7202885]

>>7202881
>it's mostly the color of whatever the road is made of, and not mostly the color of dust
You've never pressure washed a driveway, have you?

[Anonymous No.7202887]

>>7202881
Solar roadways are fucking stupid. Anyone who can't understand that is also fucking stupid.

[Anonymous No.7202896]

>>7202881
>If you look at a road, and you see that it's mostly the color of whatever the road is made of, and not mostly the color of dust,

You fucking what m8?

[Anonymous No.7202921]

>>7202887
Are you seriously going to sit there, and declare that because you think an idea is bad on the whole, you're gong to dismiss anyone who criticizes any objection to the idea?

This is the dumbest fucking thing to say. Equally as bad as the people who watched that "solar roadways" video and just believed everything they said without questioning.

The "solar roadways" video was full of stupid bullshit and bad ideas. But that doesn't mean that every claim people make against the concept is valid or intelligent. And it doesn't mean that there isn't any useful way of making roads into solar collectors.

I mean, look at these chucklefucks:
>>7202885
>>7202896
Two people who can't understand that if you can see something, light is reaching it.

This easily is as dumb as anything anyone has claimed in support of solar roadways.

[Anonymous No.7202967]

>>7196490
this

[Anonymous No.7203199]

>>7202967
>The blue lines are what's needed, in billions; the red lines show what's actually being spent. Since the financial crisis, funding has fallen well short of the target, according to BNEF.

I swear, these niggas who only know how to read pictures instead of the words beside them.

[Anonymous No.7203221]

>>7195960
at least our jew overlords will make the decision for us right?

>bloomberg
like, are you serious? a new one of these articles comes out every month. It's the same shitshuffling. The us government has a fuck ton of oil and oil companies majorly lobby and have representatives everywhere. Some of the natural methods practically use the same amount of oil just to manufacture / operate.

[Anonymous No.7203262]

>>7195960
>Solar panels
>Not efficient
>Degrade over time
>Cost more money than they save

>Fossil fuels
>Pollute environment
>Cheap
>Don't get worse over time
>Transportable, high energy content

[Anonymous No.7203454]

>>7196625
lol @ this.
lol @ solar roadways in general, one of the biggest energy scams ever

[Anonymous No.7203475]

>>7196928
>Not everybody likes looking at wind turbines

[Anonymous No.7203479]

>>7198958
not to mention pumped hydro. or my fave, compressed air

[Anonymous No.7203504]

>>7203479
These are all mechanical systems, so they would require maintenance and be prone to breakdowns.

Batteries are the only realistic option for storing energy at the home (or otherwise where it's being used), which is the most logical place for it, because it would greatly simplify the power network.

[Anonymous No.7203620]

>>7203504
>what is economies of scale?
there must be a point in cost effectiveness where storing potential energy on a large scale is more efficient than storing electricity in millions of "small" batteries. also, what about energy loss in batteries?

[Anonymous No.7203632]

>>7203620
>also, what about energy loss in batteries?
What about it? One of the best reasons to look at batteries is that they lose so little energy in the round trip compared to other methods.

[Anonymous No.7203707]

>>7203632
He's thinking of self-discharge, which is irrelevant for storage batteries as they are almost always being charged and discharged. What matters more is There are a whole bunch of technologies in development right now where cost per kWh of storage, lifetime and charge/discharge cycles are being optimised as opposed to charge density, which is what was being focused on for a long time. A few of these are very promising, among which are the liquid metal batteries and sodium ion batteries.

[Anonymous No.7204041]

>>7203475
i think they look cool and make a city futuristic looking. pic related, the whole city looks futuristic anyway and the windmills help.

[Anonymous No.7204044]

>>7196928
>Not everybody likes looking at wind turbines.
I don't get this argument. Power lines and cell towers are some ugly shit and literally no one complains about them. At least windmills are kinda aesthetic.

[Anonymous No.7204058]

>>7195960

Did you actually read it? It's stupid bullshit, based entirely on multi-decade "forecasts."

[Anonymous No.7204070]

>>7196625
Why would you put solar panels on the ground that people cover? It's not like we've run out of space to put solar panels where they would have a complete unobstructed view of the sun.

[Anonymous No.7204089]

>>7204041
They look pretty cool when they catch fire, too.

>>7204070
People are stupid, more at seven.

[Anonymous No.7204100]

>>7204070
The idea is that it's a surface that you need to maintain anyway, it's a structure that's worthwhile to functionally upgrade for other reasons (roads connect all property to each other, if they also carry data and power, then you're unifying a lot of what makes society work), it's a system that's worthwhile to build to a higher standard for other reasons (less traffic disruption if repairs are needed less often), people are not attached to it looking any particular way (no aesthetic objection), and there's a hell of a lot of it, which is all basically the same.

There are some things that go along with it naturally, like high-bandwidth near-field network connections, induction charge-while-driving systems, and precision guidance for self-driving vehicles.

The question today isn't whether it makes sense to deploy today on a massive scale, but whether we should be researching ways to do it affordably. I think the tiny amount being spent experimenting with solar collection in roads is entirely justified.

[Anonymous No.7204115]

>>7204089
Apparently, when you leave a giant whirligig out in the weather for a few years, they occasionally throw an airliner-wing-sized blade and fall over, or get hit by lightning or suffer a mechanical or electrical failure and catch fire.

Who knew?
http://www.windbyte.co.uk/safety.html

[Anonymous No.7204117]

Go nuclear or go home.

You can't get 100 joules/day per square meter of solar panels if the total amount of energy irradiated from the sun in that day in that sqm is 36 joules.
(Values out of my ass)

[Anonymous No.7204124]

>>7196045
Solar power is actually nuclear power that is wireless transmitted through photons to receivers. The solar panel that you know of is only one piece of the system.

[Anonymous No.7204126]

>>7204117
>100 joules/day
>per square meter
>the total amount of energy irradiated from the sun
>36 joules
You are not allowed to have an opinion on anything ever again.

[Anonymous No.7204130]

>>7204124
Not at all. Solar originates as fusion power, and though it involves nuclei, its origin is not what we typically refer to as nuclear power.

[Anonymous No.7204138]

>>7204100
Wouldn't sidewalks make more sense?

[Anonymous No.7204141]

>>7204126
he said "if the total amount of energy irradiated from the sun in that day in that sqm is 36 joules."

Damn, son. Learn to read

[Anonymous No.7204142]

and no one has mentioned the new EIA report?
http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/04/eia-predicts-little-change-in-us-carbon.html

We need nukes, we need renewables, what we don't need are fossil fuels.

And no we do not have an option to exclude nuclear at this point. How many degrees of warming is it worth to exclude nuclear?

[Anonymous No.7204151]

>>7204142
They should come up with a convoluted name for nuclear power, because your average person/politician who hears "nuclear" will immediately think NOPE. Why not call it Fission Power instead?

[Anonymous No.7204159]

>>7204141
I read it fine.

A square meter of sunlight square on at sea level on Earth is delivering roughly one kilowatt of power.

That is one thousand watts. One watt being one joule per second.

>36 joules/day
The innumeracy... it burns.

[Anonymous No.7204165]

>>7204151
shit, why the fuck don't we do this? There's probably a better name than fission power.

[Anonymous No.7204166]

>>7204159
Oh I thought you missed the square meter part. Either way it was weird.

[Anonymous No.7204172]

>>7204151
Kek, this is exactly the reason why MRI got its name, people thought that idiots would be scared off by the word "nuclear" in the name if they used the proper term (nuclear magnetic resonance), so they dropped it.

[Anonymous No.7204174]

>>7204166
There are 3600 seconds in an hour.

The sun is up for multiple hours per day, in most places.

[Anonymous No.7204185]

>>7204159
Well, yeah, but that obviously doesn't mean that one shall receive one kilowatt. More likely around 200 watts

[Anonymous No.7204196]

>>7204185
Just fucking leave it.

This is what you're defending:
>You can't get 100 joules/day per square meter of solar panels if the total amount of energy irradiated from the sun in that day in that sqm is 36 joules.

[Anonymous No.7205385]

I don't even get this whole debate. I'm all for renewable energy, but even with some basic understanding of physics I am able to come to the conclusion that nuclear power is more efficient than either solar/wind while also being cleaner and safer than burning fossil.

Fukushima's surroundings should not have been evacuated as they have been. It was an overreaction by the authorities and the company operating the plant, due to pressure by the fear mongering media.

[Anonymous No.7205655]

>>7202865

You know we can just look this stuff up right?

https://www.quandl.com/c/markets/coal

http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=72&t=2

http://www.uranium.info/unit_conversion_table.php

Buying your uranium would net me 1 250 000 000 Btus while buying coal would net me 3 780 000 000 Btus, so excuse me if I don't fall all over myself to take you up on your bargain.

[Anonymous No.7205759]

>>7202865
>Even at $10,000/kg, fuel isn't a significant cost in a high-burnup breeder reactor.
>>7205655
>1 250 000 000 Btus
That's the figure given for a pound (not a kilogram) of enriched uranium (not natural uranium), used in a conventional light-water moderated reactor (not a breeder reactor).

A non-breeder reactor runs on U235, which is about 0.7% of natural uranium. A uranium-fueled breeder reactor runs on U238, which is the other 99.3% of natural uranium, and it will also happily burn up the U235 in the fuel. There are also thorium-fueled breeder reactors (compared to uranium, it's harder to find good thorium ore, and there's far less thorium in sea water, but there is more thorium in granite, and the breeder reactors are also technically easier in some ways).

Breeder reactors already exist, and are used for commercial power generation. For instance, there is one currently operating in Russia, the BN-600, with the next-generation model, the BN-800 just coming on-line. The USA, France, and the UK have all given them a go in the past. Russia, India, Japan, and probably China are currently actively deploying them.

Anyway, we were talking about how long the world's nuclear fuel supply would last. Coal will stop being an option long before conventional uranium runs out, never mind seawater uranium, which can already be extracted at around $300/kg.

By the time we would have to start leaching nuclear fuel out of granite because we had taken it all out of the ocean, I think it's safe to assume that we'd have breeder reactors all figured out.

[Anonymous No.7205843]

>>7196464
>>7196504
>literally making a gorillion of ultra-hard glass bricks with solar cells inside them to use as roads

even dumber than mars one
like, you could just put the solar cells in some desert and build normal roads, and you'd get the exact same result for a fraction of the cost.

[Anonymous No.7205848]

>>7196835
>Technology's going to keep advancing.

then come back with your solar roadway lunacy once the tech you need for it is actually available.
but no, better make a kickstarter and scam gullible retards out of their money by advertising tech that doesn't exist yet...

[Anonymous No.7205871]

>>7200817
>I was obviously talking about how a new kind of attack can suddenly appear as a coordinated strike at multiple locations at once

if IS have the capacity to fuck a nuclear plant so hard that it goes into meltdown, they might as well blow up the white house and the pentagon directly.

seriously, nuclear plants are fucking huge fortresses with safety measures only rivaled by military bases and government emergency bunkers.

[Anonymous No.7205924]

>>7205871
>if IS have the capacity to fuck a nuclear plant so hard that it goes into meltdown, they might as well blow up the white house and the pentagon directly.
Blowing up the White House and the Pentagon wouldn't disrupt the USA nearly as much as cracking open a few nuclear reactors chosen for the greatest effect.

>nuclear plants are fucking huge fortresses
I don't want to start talking about specifics of how to do it, but if you're imagining that it can't be done, you're living in a fantasy world.

[Anonymous No.7205950]

>>7205848
That kickstarter was to raise money for research and development. If the technology was mature and ready for deployment, they wouldn't need to do R&D.

They demonstrated something that worked, but was not practical, and asked for quite a reasonable amount of money to help evolve it into something practical.

You clearly don't have any idea of how engineering works. If we want a good way to put solar collectors in roads, we need to experiment with it for at least ten years, and probably more like twenty, to see the actual effects of traffic and weather and figure out how to deal with them.

If we have breakthroughs in cheap PV and road-construction robots that would make this worth doing, and we, as an entire species, haven't been putting a few million dollars a year into exploring this option, then we won't have the data to deploy a reliable system.

I don't understand the mentality that could prompt people to fly into a rage that a small amount of money is being spent to experiment with this.

[Anonymous No.7206102]

>>7205950
>I don't understand the mentality that could prompt people to fly into a rage that a small amount of money is being spent to experiment with this

Yes you do, it's possession by the suppressive aspect of the collective unconscious
Or it's shills :^)

[Anonymous No.7206176]

>>7195960
tfw working on perovskite solar cells

[Anonymous No.7206228]

>>7205871
>>7205924
If they could get into a nuclear plant in the first place, they'd probably be better off just stealing fissile material and turning it into a few bombs.

[Anonymous No.7206768]

>>7206228
Yeah, man. Nuclear power plants totally have crates labelled, "weapon-grade material" laying around in the hallways. You could, like, just grab some and make a nuclear bomb in your basement.