I think they'll do it if he redirects that $2b for the wall. Not even kidding.
To hell with the monument to white nationalism. Trump will be out of office soon enough and we can move on and forget about the damn wall.
What if he gets a second term?
Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push
311–320 of 353 posts
Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is people like you redefining what risk means, then saying the people who define it properly don't understand it. The problem is people with small minds or an agenda on their small mind, redefining what is important to others, and calling them stupid. By your false definition, the risk of me getting hit by a car when crossing a street is less than the risk of me getting killed by the smog cars make. While…
And metal too. I remember, it was on the news a couple of times when radioactive metallic pipes were stopped on the Russia-Ukraine border. http://www.guillaume-herbaut.com/en/the-black-gold-of-cherno...
They were only stopped because someone didn't pay off someone. There are trucks from Ukraine to Russia constantly going through "the war zone" and everyone lets them pass - neither side shoots them down. Mostly on those trucks is fake booze and shit like cheese. Stuff that goes on the news is for show, just like the stuff on the news in the US. The reality is quite different.
Anywise, careful with factual information on here. You're about to get downvoted and flagged. If you keep presenting those facts you'll get shadow banned and have to create a new account. Weekly thing for me nowadays.
Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you. Whenever I see someone compare nuclear deaths to solar deaths (lot of solar death are falling off a roof), I slap my forehead when they suggest full speed ahead with nuclear (despite it being too expensive, uninsurable without government backing, and no waste disposal plans) instead of...making it harder to fall off of roofs when installing rooftop solar.
We allow cities close to the ocean even though the Japanese tsunami damages cost more than ten times as much as the nuclear accident it caused. We allow cities on fault lines as well, even though earth quakes could kill hundreds of thousands of people. What does ”uninsurable” mean? If nuclear power plants are uninsurable Silicon Valley is uninsurable.
Uninsurable means a nuclear generator cannot obtain commercial liability insurance due to black swan events that could incur hundreds of billions of dollars in liability.
Silicon Valley is insurance because the liability exposure is substantially less.
Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
World capacity for the production of new solar panels is significantly under-used right now. There are no raw material limits in the short-medium term[1]. The rate of expansion of solar production is limited more by demand than supply at the moment. Some countries have dense populations and poor availability of sunny land, like Belgium and the Netherlands. The US has better sun and lower population density. There is…
Have you considered real estate prices? I don't doubt any of the stats you cite, but it seems that one of the biggest impediments to solar is the huge amount of area it requires. The real estate costs of putting such plants nearby large population centers seems to be one of the major costs. Rooftop solar seems to be a good solution, but it's still not economical without generous government incentives. Anecdote: A col…
I have calculated the contribution of real estate prices for California solar farms. The cost of land accounts for a tiny part of large scale PV electricity costs -- less than 1%. But of course California is both sunnier and much less densely populated than New Jersey.
Rooftop solar is not especially cost-effective. It yields less energy per installed watt than large solar farms and it costs multiple times as much per watt to install in the US. If the US could get its permitting and inspection for rooftop solar streamlined and standardized like in Germany or Australia, then the price premium over ground-mount systems would be more like 40% than 400%, and it would be worth considering in states without large open spaces.
Even in Germany rooftop systems are less cost-effective than ground mount systems though the cost-effectiveness gap isn't as large as in the US. I attribute Germany's continued incentives for rooftop solar to a desire to maintain broad societal buy-in to the energy transition. Millions of households and businesses all with their own stake in solar makes for a large and stable coalition of supporters. Just having the legacy energy utilities build their own big solar plants is more cost effective but doesn't give so many people a personal stake in the transition.
Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you. Whenever I see someone compare nuclear deaths to solar deaths (lot of solar death are falling off a roof), I slap my forehead when they suggest full speed ahead with nuclear (despite it being too expensive, uninsurable without government backing, and no waste disposal plans) instead of...making it harder to fall off of roofs when installing rooftop solar.
By refusing to support an alternative solution, you are supporting the status quo. It is easy to bring up problem after problem with alternatives. It is not easy to show why the status quo is somehow better, because it is not. A death is a death. Someone dieing because they fell off a roof is equally as bad as dieing due to radiation.
> By refusing to support an alternative solution, you are supporting the status quo.
I do support an alternative solution: making rooftop installs safer, and more utility scale ground mount solar. Both are infinitely more tractable as problems than properly managed nuclear power. The US is already on track to install more utility scale solar this year (~150GW) than total existing nuclear generating capacity, even accounting for capacity factor. One year!
Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
That really hurts the crowd that lives paycheck to paycheck. Price goes up: someone goes without.
What is electricity prices went up with usage? So you get X kWh per month for one price, then after that it's 1.5x the rate. You could just do this on residential rates only so businesses aren't affected.
Uber surge pricing on a basic living utility? No thanks. Same issue as with fuel - the wealthy people who are often the most wasteful with resources (driving Hummers and V8/10 SUVs and cars, private jets, etc.) are the ones who would be affected the least because the price wouldn't impact their habits. Meanwhile, a middle/low-class family would be paying 1.5x the rate to keep the lights on home.
Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
why remove the incentive for businesses to optimize their energy usage? They have as much if not more external costs as a residential home.
If anything it is most important to apply this to businesses. Most consumer choice related emissions, as it's often framed, is taken through the proxy of a business that hasn't optimised their energy output to this extent. This is all the more relevant when you consider that consumers often don't have visibility over the practices of the business that they're interacting with, and particularly that of the supply chai…
Exactly. How about offices that keep the lights on or half-dimmed all night, as well as the computers running?
Businesses are often the most wasteful.
Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very interesting, thanks. I too would like to see "utility-scale photovoltaics". So...what is the limiting factor in producing new solar panels? A raw material, or well-lit land near population centers, or political will, or what?
World capacity for the production of new solar panels is significantly under-used right now. There are no raw material limits in the short-medium term[1]. The rate of expansion of solar production is limited more by demand than supply at the moment. Some countries have dense populations and poor availability of sunny land, like Belgium and the Netherlands. The US has better sun and lower population density. There is…
Ok, thanks again for filling me in on the details, and nice username btw.
Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're right great Cheops, king of kings, we should stick to bronze swords, the next 100,000 year risk profile of iron smelting hasn't been drawn up yet. Nobody in any environment or endeavour in history applies 100k years risk assessment on any activity. This is green fundamentalism and next comes mandatory veganism and forced sterilization.
Nice series of strawman and ad-hominem.
I thought about that. It is a bit ad-hominemy but the argument stands. This is a longer version without the ad hominem. No proposed electricity solution with a 100,000 year risk assessment exists. All infrastructure related to power distribution and generation such as dams or existing transmission gear, the fundamental constructs of power consumption would be open to question from the plastic insulation on wires to the energy cost of digging cobalt to the ecological damage of dam construction and mining.
If a 100,000 year cost is applied to things the reductionist result is to promote a reduced societal load which demands de-population and inevitably less enemy eating and since society is not on a path to either it's probably legislated or enforced. It's the Indian emergency and forced sterilization.
Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
That really hurts the crowd that lives paycheck to paycheck. Price goes up: someone goes without.
What is electricity prices went up with usage? So you get X kWh per month for one price, then after that it's 1.5x the rate. You could just do this on residential rates only so businesses aren't affected.
That's a good way to encourage the middle class to conserve. Subsidies are needed for the poor.