221–230 of 269 posts
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Even if we could build dams with no worry about the environment, it wouldn't help. There are not many places left to build them, and a lot more would be needed. Sure use them where we have them, but they are not a something we can grow.
Pumped hydro can be built off rivers. The opportunities for that are vast.
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I read "The Fountainhead" at age 18 and was marvelled by it. I even quoted bits of Howard Roark's speeches on second-handers. I re-read it at age 25 and, uh, it's a really bad novel built around a couple of awesome "yas queen" kind of put-down rants. I feel the same about Accelerando. At one point I was in a clubbing phase and always took my paperback in my jacket pockets. Then, I never fully read it a second time be…
Accelerando is geek bait. His best work is the Laundry series which he's still working on. Disclaimer: no idea what his opinion of his work is.
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It's impossible to make binding long-term promises in a democracy. Voters are allowed to change their minds, and the risk that they do that and completely destroy nuclear engineering as a career option is always present. Something like software engineering is a much safer career option, because the risk that your country will categorically ban it is pretty low. And because it doesn't tie you to a small number of poss…
> It's impossible to make binding long-term promises in a democracy. We can make binding financial promises at least. It's entirely possible to grant nuclear workers each a personal 60 year annuity managed by a consortium of foreign banks, and requiring the worker to pick between working as an engineer, returning the annuity, or sitting in prison.
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But that’s a false dichotomy. Renewables are already good enough and are still getting better.
I am just not sure. Looking at todays German energy mix, renewables provide about 20% of the load. There isn’t much wind or sun at the moment. The rest is Gas, which has become very expensive this winter. And Coal. We would need to invest into power-to-gas like crazy if we wanted any shot of providing a base load.
But sadly it went slightly up from 24% to 24,5% in 2020 (don't have the source at hand right now for this second statistic).
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passive fail-safe already existed 20 years ago. CANDU Reactor is exactly that. Doesn't even need enriched uranium.
So what happened? Why aren't we in a world of abundant energy?
I bet the Fukushima backup power system would have fit this explanation perfectly: > in addition to the grid connection, there are four twelve megawatt diesel generator stations spaced around each corner of the plant -- each with two generators, any one of which is able to provide operating power to keep the reactor's safety systems working. Unfortunately for Fukushima, all generators were flooded by a single Tsunami…
That was sadly not an unknown at all. TEPCO was definitely aware of the possibility given that flooding in the generator rooms had happened before, and they deliberately ignored studies finding they were not prepared for a tsunami.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_disaster#Pri...
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Pumped hydro can be built off rivers. The opportunities for that are vast.
Not at the scale needed.
Mr. Stross was kind enough to pop into the discussion but too much of a gentleman to plug his new book, so I’ll do it: The new Laundryverse book, _Quantum of Nightmares_, was released today.
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Turns out a steam based thermodynamic cycle is expensive even with "free" energy.
Current price of Nuclear in Ontario (generated by CANDU reactors) is 5.9 cents per kWh.
Now, currently we are building solar farms in desert areas for ~1.5 cent per kWh. Including both CAPEX and OPEX. On-shore wind is built at ~3 cents per kWh and ~6 cents per kWh for off-shore.
This is where the explosion of renewables is coming from, they currently undercut the marginal cost of traditional power sources.