Ozone: The Earth's protective shield is repairing • Hacker News Board

Re: Ozone: The Earth's protective shield is repairing

#101

Post by glenneroo » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 11:20 AM UTC

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #94

obpacheco wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if I would call that a good alternative. How many places on the Earth can you no longer go due to radiation? Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island and the list will go on. Also it seams very short sided in terms of planning for out of control cosmic events such as asteroids or coronal mass ejections which could wipe out our grid, leading to nuclear leaks worldwide. If we were to get something like the…

TMI has already been addressed in sibling comments but I just wanted to point out that both Fukushima and Chernobyl were outdated reactor designs with active cooling. A modern reactor has much safer failure mode - but the hysteria about nuclear means that they don't get built and we keep these dangerous old designs running instead.

There are currently zero reactors worldwide which are using up-to-date designs i.e. Gen IV, as it is still being designed with the first reactor expected to be built by ~2030. All reactors worldwide are Gen II (designed in the 50s), Gen II+ (updated Gen II with a end-of-life extension to 60 years instead of Gen II's 40) or Gen III, which have relatively minor differences according to the World Nuclear Association[0]. The last Gen I reactor finally went offline in 2015.

> Due to the prolonged period of stagnation in the construction of new reactors and the continued (but declining) popularity of Generation II/II+ designs in new construction, relatively few third generation reactors have been built. Generation IV designs are still in development as of 2017, and are not expected to start entering commercial operation until 2020–2030.[1]

[0]: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fue...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor#Reactor_types

Re: Ozone: The Earth's protective shield is repairing

#102

Post by pygy_ » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 11:39 AM UTC

A2017U1 wrote: post #15

If only we could get such swift global action on greenhouse emissions. Both problems are essentially the same yet the difference in action couldn't be wider.

There’s a scale difference.

CFC was a small part of the economy.

As a first approximation, burning fossil fuel is the economy.

Re: Ozone: The Earth's protective shield is repairing

#103

Post by barry-cotter » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 12:21 PM UTC

Vinnl wrote: post #86

barry-cotter wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a good alternative. France produces ~80% of its electricity with nuclear power.

Is it a good alternative if it is much more expensive?

France’s energy prices are lower than Germany, Belgium, Italy and Spain.

https://1-stromvergleich.com/electricity-prices-europe/

Re: Ozone: The Earth's protective shield is repairing

#104

Post by F_r_k » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 1:04 PM UTC

hyperpallium wrote: post #25

pseudolus wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the significant differences is that in the 1980s when the issue of ozone depletion was being confronted, politics was not as polarized. One of the great successes of those arguing for action was recruiting Conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a trained chemist, as an advocate https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/energy/2016/10/will-ma...

Dr. Margaret Thatcher EDIT I must apologise to my parent, and to HN in general. Her thesis was undergraduate: > ... four-year Chemistry Bachelor of Science degree, specialising in X-ray crystallography under the supervision of Dorothy Hodgkin. Her dissertation was on the structure of the antibiotic gramicidin. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher

I find it funny that you would try to correct such a small insignificant detail

Re: Ozone: The Earth's protective shield is repairing

#105

Post by zip1234 » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 1:37 PM UTC

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #36

hyperpallium wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dr. Margaret Thatcher EDIT I must apologise to my parent, and to HN in general. Her thesis was undergraduate: > ... four-year Chemistry Bachelor of Science degree, specialising in X-ray crystallography under the supervision of Dorothy Hodgkin. Her dissertation was on the structure of the antibiotic gramicidin. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher

Surely the Prime Minister title wins out? Actually, that’s an interesting question: since “Dr” usually replaces “Mr” for a man, would a male president with a doctorate be “Dr President”?

For University presidents, in the USA, they usually have both. Though I'm not sure that they always use both at the same time.

Re: Ozone: The Earth's protective shield is repairing

#106

Post by mohaine » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 1:44 PM UTC

tolien wrote: post #11

mohaine wrote: post #7

Ok, now that refrigerates are ozone safe can we get all the regulations removed from them? At least for the safe ones? Right now if you don't reclaim the R-134A from your car AC or fridge it is a $27k fine while you can buy cans of it to blow out your keyboard. Same goes for propane. This makes the new fridges that use propane almost impossible to work on since nobody has the reclamation equipment for R290.

R-134A has a global warming potential of 1550 over 100 years [1], i.e. about 45 times more effective than methane, so while it's not eating the ozone layer you probably shouldn't be spraying it around by the tonne either. Edit: and CO2 has a GWP of 1 (as the reference point for GWP), so R-134A is way more effective than that. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential#Value...

In a perfect world, requiring reclamation would help. In the real world it just pushes this off to gray market recycler. They will come by and pick up your broken fridge for free for the recycle value but most will just vent the refrigerant no mater what. They just claim it was zero pressure when they found it. Hooking up a reclamation machine and paying for the refrigerant disposal would take all the profit out of this service.

So the fine mostly just stops the fridge from being worked on by qualified professionals. Perfectly fixable items are going in the trash because nobody wants to buy dedicated equipment for every refrigerant used. R134A is common enough to make the equipment worthwhile to own but not so much for propane and other less common refrigerants.

Re: Ozone: The Earth's protective shield is repairing

#107

Post by maa5444 » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 1:50 PM UTC

so you guys in the States started to #consume less and less ... to match the footprint of the rest of the universe ?

Re: Ozone: The Earth's protective shield is repairing

#108

Post by thinkcontext » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 1:54 PM UTC

mrfusion wrote: post #62

justinator wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are citations to my numbers (since I seem to be downvoted): * Transportation: 28% https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-... * Livestock is 14.5% of all GHG emissions, cows are 65% of that: http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/ * Stories on how the US Military is the world' biggest polluters: https://www.newsweek.com/2014/07/25/us-department-defence-on... https://www.foreignpol…

Cows just confuse the issue though since they’re mostly producing methane which although a ghg doesn’t stick around too long.

Methane decaying just means the atmospheric concentration doesn't increase as fast. But if you emit more than the previous year then levels will go up. And indeed, levels are currently 3 times what they were from pre-industrial levels [0].

The EPA says its Global Warming Potential over 100 years is 28-36 times CO2 [1]. 100 years sounds like a very relevant time period to me.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane#Patterns_o...

[1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warmin...

Re: Ozone: The Earth's protective shield is repairing

#109

Post by Kurtz79 » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 2:00 PM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #103

Vinnl wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a good alternative if it is much more expensive?

France’s energy prices are lower than Germany, Belgium, Italy and Spain. https://1-stromvergleich.com/electricity-prices-europe/

Italy (where nuclear power was banned by referendum many years ago) is not able to meet its internal demand, and need to source energy from neighboring countries (including France), not really surprising.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Italy

Germany and Belgium are phasing out their own reactors:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_phase-out

Re: Ozone: The Earth's protective shield is repairing

#110

Post by IMTDb » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 2:00 PM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #49

tomerico wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the key part. What CPC case teaches us, is that if we could find a good alternative to Fossil fuels, we could likely eliminate their use.

We have a good alternative. France produces ~80% of its electricity with nuclear power.

The issue is that "green" parties in Europe (and maybe the US) do not want to hear about nuclear either. Germany even had to shut their nuclear power plants down and go back to coal (!!) which is considered as major victory for the environment by the green parties.

It seems impossible to find green political leaders willing to improve our CO2 emissions while accepting that we can't just rely on renewable energy only right now.