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Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

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Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#261

Post by jakewins »

ouid wrote: post #238
jakewins wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are 100% in agreement that societies subsidies of fossil generation far outstrip anything else. My question was about your claim that nuclear has the lowest subsidy of any generator. > It is extremely unlikely that a nuclear accident will ever exceed these damages. I mean, the Fukushima cleanup (~$500B) is costing about three orders of magnitude above the liability ceiling ($450M) of the private insurance componen…

First of all, these numbers for the Fukushima cleanup don't make sense. 500B is the annual budget of medicare , or roughly the market cap of a FAANG. Your source appears to be wikipedia, so I looked into it, and their figure is from a scientific american article in which the Japanese government is quoted as saying 15 billion USD for the cleanup and 60 billion USD for relocation damages. Quite a lot of money, but defi…

Assuming your lower estimate of 15B + 60B, that remains two orders of magnitude above the insurance policy you claim "is extremely unlikely" to be exceeded, so arguably my point stands.

"Reliable power" is well.. this keeps coming up, and it's always this black-and-white thing; sometimes the wind doesn't blow, so you can't rely on it.

And then the other side will counter that the downtime of wind is predictable, unlike that of nuclear (see the need to raise the price ceiling in EU day-ahead markets to deal with the unplanned nuke outages in France going on right now). This side will say the predictable 45% capacity factor of wind is preferable to the unpredictable 90% capacity factor of nukes.

In reality, a stable energy system is built by combining energy sources of different strengths. Wind and solar provides bulk cheap power most of the time, with hydro and nukes ramping to match production changes. This is identical to how the grid is already ramping to match demand changes every day.

We see this dynamic every day in EU markets, with wind+hydro slotting together, hydro flexing up and down as wind ebbs and flows. You can see this live in the "Origin of Electricity" charts on electricitymap: https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/SE

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#262

Post by fluoridation »

shmeeed wrote: post #255
fluoridation wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Solar efficiency is very different from say engine efficiency. A very efficient combustion engine is 35% efficient meaning it wastes 65% of the energy in the input fuel. Solar panels don’t waste sunlight and have no input costs. They're exactly the same kinds of waste. A 35% efficient IC engine wastes 65% of the energy in the fuel heating itself up. A 20% efficient photovoltaic cell wastes 80% of the energy in the l…

This argument only stood if the fuel for the IC engine were raining from heaven for free and would go 100% to waste if not burned, and if the combustion process itself produced no other waste than heat, both of which are obviously not true. You have to consider /all/ inputs and outputs for any honest assessment of efficiency. Yes, I am aware solar cells need to be manufactured, producing waste in the process. Still,…

That's not what "efficiency" means, though. The efficiency of a power source is the ratio between the actually generated work and the work that could theoretically be generated. I don't know if the metric you're referencing has a name but let's call it "greenness". arcticbull's argument was that solar panels are inefficient at converting light into electricity, not that they're ungreen. dpierce9 tried to reframe the discussion from efficiency into greenness for no apparent reason.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#263

Post by dpierce9 »

arcticbull wrote: post #254
dpierce9 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A nuclear plant that is 100% efficient would be better than the current ~40% units but it is thermodynamically impossible. Thanks Carnot. You are confusing operating/marginal efficiency with lifetime efficiency. Think about a power plant as a series of payments. You have one big up front payment to build the thing and a series of smaller payments to buy fuel and run it. For solar, those smaller payments are zero. The…

> The marginal cost of rooftop solar is zero. Nothing is wasted. Really! No, it isn't. There's literally materials consumed to build the solar panels, and a 0.4-0.8 deaths per TWh generated. To your own point a 1-2 year recovery period on panels that last 20 is 5-10% loss in energy off the mark. We don't really have a recycling plan, but we better get one, because solar generates a ton of waste materials. To power th…

MARGINAL. I will try one more time because a stranger is wrong on the internet. It is the difference between how much a car costs and how many miles per gallon it gets. Once you have paid for the car, the only thing that matters with respect to fuel efficiency is MPG. The MPG of solar is infinity because there are no gallons to buy/use once you have bought the car. You are confusing purchase price with MPG for some reason. There is no additional material used once the panels are installed and nothing wasted. For a car, 65% or more of every gallon you buy is wasted.

There isn’t a lot of demand for panel recycling because most panels have been installed in the last 10-15 years are not end of life. When there is demand there will be recyclers, you don’t need to centrally plan it.

There actually is NOT a lot of room to improve with monocrystalline silicon and other single band panels. The theoretical max efficiency on them is 40% so they are currently more than 50% of their max, room but not a lot. The technical efficiency (how much of the energy hitting the panel is turned in to electricity) is subsumed by the economics. For ROOFTOP, small systems can offset residential load 100%. I am not sure what is inefficient about that on any definition.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#264

Post by macspoofing »

black_puppydog wrote: post #253
macspoofing wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure you're not just making excuses for the failure of renewables in Germany to replace fossil fuels? Again, I mentioned Germany, but it isn't just Germany. No country in the world is running on wind/solar. There are no near-term plans for any country on Earth to replace fossil fuels with wind/solar. It isn't the fact that some conservative leaders put some extra taxes or regulations on solar and wind. It's t…

Yes, I'm pretty sure. The conservative govts of the different regions introduced legislation that meant you can't currently build wind energy _at all_ in many of the places where it would make sense. That wasn't a fluke; the stated intent was to keep wind energy from "ruining our beautiful landscape". The new (SPD/green/liberals) coalition is just in the process of slowly unwinding these. For solar, the ministries ar…

>Frankly, and I'm sorry to sound rude about this, you need to stop using a country as an argument for which you clearly have no idea what the political & societal conditions are.

I don't take this as rudeness but rather a result of a different worldview.

The disconnect you and I have is that you believe that wind/solar can replace fossil fuels. In a universe where that fact is true, the fact that wind/solar hasn't been rolled out would most likely be a result of bad government policy.

I don't believe wind/solar can replace fossil fuels. So the fact that wind/solar haven't succeeded in Germany is perfectly inline with expectations. It wouldn't matter what policies Germany put in, because it isn't possible for wind/solar to replace fossil fuels was never going to work. There was no policy that was going to change the reality of this.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#265

Post by RobertRoberts »

anonporridge wrote: post #202
RobertRoberts wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear is the safest way to generate electricity Until there is an accident, then it's literally the worst.

Nuclear is still the safest, even including Chernobyl and Fukishima. An equivalent number of people die from solar and wind, independently. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy This is a huge problem for humanity to solve. We're more afraid of acute horrors that are statistically insignificant than we are of diffuse, but statistically horrifying dangers.

Would you rather live near a nuclear accident or a solar farm/wind turbine accident?

A simple consideration shows nuclear accidents are above and beyond the worst humans have ever experienced. There is no comparison, not even a close second.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#266

Post by dpierce9 »

fluoridation wrote: post #262
shmeeed wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument only stood if the fuel for the IC engine were raining from heaven for free and would go 100% to waste if not burned, and if the combustion process itself produced no other waste than heat, both of which are obviously not true. You have to consider /all/ inputs and outputs for any honest assessment of efficiency. Yes, I am aware solar cells need to be manufactured, producing waste in the process. Still,…

That's not what "efficiency" means, though. The efficiency of a power source is the ratio between the actually generated work and the work that could theoretically be generated. I don't know if the metric you're referencing has a name but let's call it "greenness". arcticbull's argument was that solar panels are inefficient at converting light into electricity, not that they're ungreen. dpierce9 tried to reframe the…

My argument has nothing to do with ‘greenness’. What I am talking about already has a name: marginal productivity or marginal efficiency.

My point is if you have to dig and burn 2.5 rocks to get 1 rocks worth of energy you are really concerned with that ratio for a whole host of reasons and affects everything you do (it is one reason why coal plants are huge for instance).

Now say you can get a rocks worth of energy with no rocks to dig and burn. Of course you still want to get the most amount of energy and there is an upper limit to how much you can collect but you no longer think about it in terms of the number of rocks you have to dig out and burn. That is a huge difference.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#267

Post by rcMgD2BwE72F »

macspoofing wrote: post #223
rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We’ve been BEGGING for more nuclear power for decades. Yes, it really made sense for De Gaulle to launch the French civil nuclear program in 1969 https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histoire_du_programme_nucl%C3%... But we're in 2022 now, and we can easily and cheaply ramp up renewables greatly before we have a storage issue. And by the time we hit such limits, we'll have many more long term storage options. I'm not agai…

>But we're in 2022 now, and we can easily and cheaply ramp up renewables greatly before we have a storage issue. Really? 'Easily' and 'cheaply'? So even with massive cultural pressure to move to renewables, somehow we don't want to move to a cheaper energy source? You sure about that? What if ... we can't actually replace fossil fuels with wind/solar.

You write about "massive cultural pressure to move to renewables" but what about all the money to be lost by the fossil fuel industry? Billions of € coming every year in deep pockets weight definitely more than the "pressure" of a Greta, a few Extinction Rebellion members and some ecologists/socialists.

Let's look at the UK, between 2000 to 2021 Source: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uk-nuclear-output-falls... (3rd chart):

- renewables went from 3 to 40%

- imports: 3.6 to 7.6%

- nuclear: 22 to 14%

- oil & gaz: 40.1 to 39.7%

- coal: 31.7 to 1.9%

Looks like we managed to replace 40% of fossil fuels in two decades, without much inflation (almost in line with countries who did not deploy renewables):

UK electricity component of the consumer prices index (in real terms 2010=100): 68.1 to 128.2 (source https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...)

Can't find the exact same series for France but you can compare the two between 2010 and 2020 here and see a comparable trend: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/bookmark/d40f8154-...

We'll see how UK continues its transition, but I see renewables becoming cheaper while nuclear keeps rising. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...: "As of May 2022, the project is two years late and the expected cost is £25–26 billion,[2] 50% more than the original budget from 2016" Oops!

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#268

Post by black_puppydog »

macspoofing wrote: post #264
black_puppydog wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I'm pretty sure. The conservative govts of the different regions introduced legislation that meant you can't currently build wind energy _at all_ in many of the places where it would make sense. That wasn't a fluke; the stated intent was to keep wind energy from "ruining our beautiful landscape". The new (SPD/green/liberals) coalition is just in the process of slowly unwinding these. For solar, the ministries ar…

>Frankly, and I'm sorry to sound rude about this, you need to stop using a country as an argument for which you clearly have no idea what the political & societal conditions are. I don't take this as rudeness but rather a result of a different worldview. The disconnect you and I have is that you believe that wind/solar can replace fossil fuels. In a universe where that fact is true, the fact that wind/solar hasn't be…

No, my point is that regardless of whether you or me are right, your use of Germany as an example is not holding up because you clearly don't bring the background knowledge to argue your point using this example. I'm not saying you're even wrong, just that this particular argument you're making is not informed enough to hold up.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#269

Post by formerkrogemp »

boucher wrote: post #160
boringg wrote: post #75

Look at his other articles - this guy is super disingenuous. Disappointed I didn't look at that first before getting baited into trying to refute his heavily inaccurate and biased position. From his other posts "Natural gas provides the most cost-effective near-term solution for affordable, reliable, low-emission energy. Shifts from coal to natural gas have produced the biggest emissions reductions over the past 15 y…

Yes, and he's been posting the same exact nonsense for a while now. The reformed idealist narrative is a marketing gimmick to attract investors.

I fell for this schtick a few years back and invested in a natural gas venture. I lost a shirt and remain salty to this day.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#270

Post by bartimus »

boringg wrote: post #75

Look at his other articles - this guy is super disingenuous. Disappointed I didn't look at that first before getting baited into trying to refute his heavily inaccurate and biased position. From his other posts "Natural gas provides the most cost-effective near-term solution for affordable, reliable, low-emission energy. Shifts from coal to natural gas have produced the biggest emissions reductions over the past 15 y…

Would be happy to read your refutes of his current article since I'm also not seeing how all these (unproven) solutions are going to successfully reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. Wonderful ideas. But I would like to see the code.

For example: The oil refinement process basically boils the oil into various types of fuels and gasses. You get a certain amount of tar, oil, gasoline, diesel, kerosine, gas etc. Refineries are able to prioritize output to certain fuel types somewhat. But not completely and/or efficiently. In the end: If we're producing X amount of diesel we get X amount of the other types as well. The amounts of fuel produced are far too great to store. They need to be burned. It means for every number of cars, trucks and boats burning diesel there will also need to be a number of planes burning kerosine. etc.

It also means that if we're moving from gasoline cars to diesel cars (because diesel has less emissions). If the demand and production for one specific type of fuel increases it will result in an increase of all the fuel types. The excess types which are less in demand would simply be shipped to somewhere else more cheaply. Or used in some other sector.

We're not only having a huge dependency on fossil fuels. But the dependency is also tightly intertwined throughout various facets of society. We'll need to somehow accomplish a mass reduction across the board. I can imagine there's many green initiatives not really contributing as much as they're hoping?

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