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Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

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Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#241

Post by scraptor »

_ph_ wrote: post #209
bin_bash wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar doesn’t provide nearly as much energy and for desalination you need a surprising amount. Nuclear is a great use-case since the problem with nuclear is it needs a constant water source. If you’re desalinating you’ve got that problem covered.

Solar doesn’t provide nearly as much energy and for desalination you need a surprising amount. That statement doesn't make any sense to me. If you need more power, install more panels. Space certainly isn't an issue in like northern Africa. It is cheaper to order a gigawatt or more of solar panels than building a new nuclear reactor, and faster to set up too. Even Germany today has way more solar capacity than it eve…

> Even Germany today has way more solar capacity than it ever had in nuclear

That's because it never had much nuclear capacity, not because it now has a lot of solar

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#242

Post by cma »

AngryData wrote: post #89
kiloreux wrote: post #6

The affects of this on third world country are even worse. Here in Algeria we are having the worst drought in over 20 years. What I fear, is that if this continues to happen, people could literally start dying from thirst again. I wonder how good is desalination of sea water technology and if we could see some startups that explore this field, certainly a lot of people's lives to be changed.

It isn't technology that holds back water desalination, it is energy availability/cost. Even the most promising desalination tech is only a small efficiency boost over simpler established methods. Yeah efficiency gains certain help over the long term, but the overall energy costs are still enormous and nearly require dedicated power plant for any significant amount of clean water. The best bet in actually desalinatin…

> The best bet in actually desalinating population scale levels of water would be investment into nuclear power.

FWIW on several occasions we came lose to losing the North American Great Lakes to nuclear accidents, the second largest freshwater stores in the world.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#243

Post by robotresearcher »

bavent wrote: post #145
6f8986c3 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of it has been environmentalists.

Can you provide some evidence of that?

Not evidence of relative magnitude, but here's a high profile green org that is explicitly anti-nuclear:

https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/nuclear-power-is-a-losing-pro...

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#245

Post by DFHippie »

Taek wrote: post #8
blondie9x wrote: post #3

To some seeing records such as these fall is heartbreaking. It’s agonizing and vexing when you wonder what can you do to help slow down climate change? The reality is we aren’t doing nearly enough to slow it down and the Earth is gradually destabilizing. We see insane cold snaps such as those that impacted Texas this winter, and at the opposite end of the spectrum heat waves unlike anything humans have ever experienc…

As an individual, there isn't really anything you can do. Going vegetarian doesn't help. Recycling doesn't help. Using your shower for 5 minutes doesn't help. As a society, we've chosen to manage resources via capitalism. If you use less water, what that means is water is cheaper so some corporation can afford another few acres of almond trees. If consumers cut their waste in half, the slack would be picked up at the…

I agree that we need regulation. We need to force the majority not to freeload on the efforts of others. That's what regulation will achieve. But that being said, regulation will work because it will get more people to do the things you say will not work. If everyone voluntarily used less resources -- ate less meat, bought less virgin plastic, drove smaller cars less often for shorter distances, etc. -- that would produce the effect of regulation.

There are things we can do as individuals, but we need all the other individuals in the high-consumption parts of the world also to do these things.

One drop of rain doesn't carve a river but water does carve rivers.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#246

Post by NoPicklez »

Here in Australia I am certain that the last couple of years of summers have been drastically cooler than previous. From memory alone, I remember having weeks of 30c+ weather with multiple days above 40c.

However, after looking at our Bureau's temperature history it says otherwise: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/history/temperature/

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#247

Post by fomine3 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #111
grishka wrote: post #100

In the US, at least, air conditioning is somewhat common from what I know. It was as hot as +35 in northwest part of Russia last week, for several days, with sun barely coming down at night, and that felt like a torture at times. Some historical records were broken.

Whoever is building and selling ACs these days, I think these companies are a good investment right now. Summers in Europe are on track to become unlivable without air conditioners in individual homes; I give it few more years before everyone and their dog will want to buy one.

Sadly they also have been affected by the chip shortage.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#248

Post by justshowpost »

b0tzzzzzzman wrote: post #196
stavros wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does nuclear need fresh water? I'd imagine salt water would wreck all the equipment, and you probably don't want to use up all the fresh water you generate...

You need very pure water for most portions of a nuclear power plan.

Not really. Pure heavy water along with pure uranium and pure CANDU reactors are imported components. The quality of cooling water and feed water doesn't matter much.

Remember, nuclear power plant is merely a very large heat engine. The main problem is terrorism there.

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#249

Post by fomine3 »

kiloreux wrote: post #6

The affects of this on third world country are even worse. Here in Algeria we are having the worst drought in over 20 years. What I fear, is that if this continues to happen, people could literally start dying from thirst again. I wonder how good is desalination of sea water technology and if we could see some startups that explore this field, certainly a lot of people's lives to be changed.

Can't we just collect rain falling to sea, or grab clouds?

Re: Heat dome causing record breaking heat wave

#250

Post by akiselev »

_ph_ wrote: post #209
bin_bash wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar doesn’t provide nearly as much energy and for desalination you need a surprising amount. Nuclear is a great use-case since the problem with nuclear is it needs a constant water source. If you’re desalinating you’ve got that problem covered.

Solar doesn’t provide nearly as much energy and for desalination you need a surprising amount. That statement doesn't make any sense to me. If you need more power, install more panels. Space certainly isn't an issue in like northern Africa. It is cheaper to order a gigawatt or more of solar panels than building a new nuclear reactor, and faster to set up too. Even Germany today has way more solar capacity than it eve…

The vast majority of our freshwater comes from sources that cost us effectively zero in energy: the water cycle moves water towards higher elevations and it flows down towards our populations. Worst case scenario, water in ancient underground reservoirs is pumped to the surface.

If we had to desalinate all that water and actively distribute it instead, it'd be a significant fraction of our current global power consumption. The power sources need to be concentrated near the desalination plants and at least half the world lives 100km+ away from a coastline. At 3 kWh per m^3 of water[1] and ~3.5 m^3 per person per day [2], that's an extra ~3800 kWh per year, which would increase per capita energy consumption by 25-30% [3] in the United States just for desalination.

We have enough challenges replacing existing power infrastructure with solar and wind. Placing the burden of desalination on top of that is unrealistic, especially since the NIMBY fight over solar installations of that size would probably be just as fierce as for a nuclear reactor.

[1] https://res.mdpi.com/d_attachment/energies/energies-12-00463...

[2] https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science-school/scie...

[3] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.ELEC.KH.PC?locat...

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