101–110 of 397 posts
Hydro isn't unfashionable. We just don't have reasonable places to keep daming, so there's little really to talk about. Nuclear is unfashionable, because there's huge growth potential among wealthy industrial countries, but because it's not "liked" there's very little actual growth.
Hydro isn't unfashionable. We just don't have reasonable places to keep daming, so there's little really to talk about. Nuclear is unfashionable, because there's huge growth potential among wealthy industrial countries, but because it's not "liked" there's very little actual growth.
It IS unfashionable, dams are actively being removed across the US in order to restore the ecosystems they shattered. Migratory fish and all predators higher up the trophic chain are devastated by any type of dam.
When I think about the giant five valley hydroplant in China, the giant Euphrat hydroplant or the giant Nile hydroplant of Aegypt, I think its more the abscence of political force which could move ten thousands of people out of the way.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I knew about it, but I don't think if you asked an average individual on the street, they'd have any clue - unlike asking any American or Canadian about Chernobyl, or any Canadian about Bhopal or Halifax. I think Chernobyl has a much bigger influence on nuclear policy than Bangqiao on hydro despite the latter causing two orders of magnitude more deaths.
> I think Chernobyl has a much bigger influence on nuclear policy than Bangqiao on hydro despite the latter causing two orders of magnitude more deaths. IMO thats entirely rational. Dying is not what I'm scared of when it comes to a Chernobyl-like accident. Dying slowly and painfully of radiation poisoning is. It's hard to imagine a worse fate. Drowning in a huge flood, while unfortunate, is something I'd be much mor…
The good news is that really didn't happen. About 40 or 50 people died of acute radiation poisoning (that's a bad way to go). Many were displaced. The most common form of cancer that occurred as a result of Chernobyl was thyroid cancer which is 'almost 100%' [2] curable generally speaking. You take the thyroid out, and folks are put on thyroxine. Broadly preventable with iodine pills and also principally attributable to acute exposure immediately following.
Worth skimming the summary of the UNSCEAR report. [1]
> Apart from this increase [6000 cases of thyroid cancer], there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure two decades after the accident. There is no scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality rates or in rates of non-malignant disorders that could be related to radiation exposure. The incidence of leukaemia in the general population, one of the main concerns owing to the shorter time expected between exposure and its occurrence compared with solid cancers, does not appear to be elevated. [1]
1 person died in Fukushima, 0 in Three Mile Island, the next two worst incidents of all time.
On the other hand, 200,000+ people died and a village was wiped off the face of the earth in Bangqiao.
[1] https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/areas-of-work/chernobyl.h...
[2] https://www.cancer.org/cancer/thyroid-cancer/detection-diagn...
"Green", if you exclude absolute sacrifice of an entire downstream ecosystem.
Downstream actually sees benefits from a dam, since the output of the river remains unnaturally constant even during periods of drought. The immediate upstream from a dam, however, is another story entirely.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Environmentalists want to increase the costs of everyday goods and services by taxing carbon. They want you to pay for the impacts of carbon emissions at the point of sale instead of socializing them later. That seems fair to me. > They want to turn your corpse into food for plants because even the sweet release of death cannot save you from the environmentalist menace. In this particular case it doesn't really mat…
> They want you to pay for the impacts of carbon emissions This can't be quantified currently. Current methods of 'paying' for carbon emissions have ended up being corrupt wealth transfers. That people are still for them is pretty good evidence they aren't really concerned about the consequences of carbon emissions.
The reason carbon markets make no sense? They don't have a supply curve. This is why politicians have to set the price artificially. The supply should be provided by carbon sequestration projects. You emit 1 ton of carbon and pay for 1 ton of carbon to be sequestered from the atmosphere. The problem of course is that carbon sequestration is incredibly expensive so the price of emitting would be unaffordable. The incentives to cheat would be massive, it would be incredibly difficult to enforce. In theory this would spur a technological arms race to develop the most cost effective and large scale way to sequester carbon from the atmosphere, but the world economy would likely collapse before that panned out. It's kind of a shame we didn't YOLO this however, because once the techs were finally developed then we could just throw money at reversing climate change and that's something people would be so happy to do. People love easy solutions that don't demand a lot of time and attention.
Fossil fuels are only cheap because we are blithely ignoring the externalities, unlike every green alternative.
Obviously hydroelectricity is massively damaging to ecosystems. My day job includes designing hydroelectric control systems and even I can admit that. That's a big part of the reason that hydro is a non-starter in much of the western world, which is probably a reasonably good thing (although there are certainly some exceptions where hydro development seems like a no-brainer to me but I digress) What's not so clear to…
> We need storage and pumped storage is the only practical way to get there with current supply chains and technology. This really cannot be enphasised enough - this is the only game in town. The solutions are needed yesterday, and must be built on a massive scale - there is no time for a 20 year R&D to production cycle of a miracle technology. Only hydro does not require any new minerals and mining. The only other c…
Such facilities should allow Ontario to run on a mix of pure nuclear, hydro and wind. Currently about 15% of the electricity supply in the province is natural gas, used at peak times when demand exceeds the constant output of the nuclear/hydro base. At other times, their surplus is sold at a loss. More pumped storage will smooth this out.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was in school for power systems planning the the accepted notion was that pumped hydro storage is cool and great, but like hydropower, it is extremely geographically dependent, and we have basically developed all of the places where it would work (at least in the US), or at least, by order of magnitude, there are not enough remaining untapped hydro-related resources to make a dent in projected storage demand.…
Entirely wrong. All pumped storage requires is a big high spot and a big low spot*. Take a look at this, for example: https://www.gordonbuttepumpedstorage.com/ There are a lot of good pumped storage sites out there. *exaggeration, but close enough.
There are really only 3 options - dam up a watershed so you can get a huge volume without much structure, build your resevoir on top of a mountain so you can get much larger pressure head and thus require less volume, or reuse a hole you were digging anyways such as an open pit mine. In all three cases you are heavily constrained by geography.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We need storage and pumped storage is the only practical way to get there with current supply chains and technology. This really cannot be enphasised enough - this is the only game in town. The solutions are needed yesterday, and must be built on a massive scale - there is no time for a 20 year R&D to production cycle of a miracle technology. Only hydro does not require any new minerals and mining. The only other c…
> Only hydro does not require any new minerals and mining. Why is mining a major obstacle, provided it is economical and the environmental costs are some orders of magnitude less than those of climate change?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Entirely wrong. All pumped storage requires is a big high spot and a big low spot*. Take a look at this, for example: https://www.gordonbuttepumpedstorage.com/ There are a lot of good pumped storage sites out there. *exaggeration, but close enough.
It is ridiculously uneconomical to create the volume for pumped storage. For context, with 100 meters of pressure head, you'd need 25,000 olympic swimming pools worth of water to store 12 hours of electricity from a 1 GW electric plant with 70% roundtrip efficiency. At a cost of $216/cubic yard of excavation, that's over $17 Billion. If you can make 3 cents per kwh profit buying at low times and selling at high, it w…
Hydro isn't unfashionable. We just don't have reasonable places to keep daming, so there's little really to talk about. Nuclear is unfashionable, because there's huge growth potential among wealthy industrial countries, but because it's not "liked" there's very little actual growth.
Actually the Yosemite valley has significant hydro potential.
First this wont work during the cold season and how incredible inneficient is this going to be?
I think we must stop to outsource providing cheap energy to poor countries and tap on our.shoulders how green we are. Lithium batteries? Fine, but no lithium mine round my corner!