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World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

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Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#161

Post by oldherl »

vasco wrote: post #137
senorrib wrote: post #77

Definitely a hard choice between an industrial complex generating thousands of jobs and a glorified camera.

Exactly, this sounds like when europeans and americans go to africa to keep the local people from using their resources under the guise of protecting wildlife. There's plenty of local sources about it but a documentary that does a great job for a foreign audience and really made me think is 'Black Mambas' https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18351318/ If us Europeans and Americans want to look at the sky undisturbed, why don…

The word "local" is strange. There are almost no real "local" people as to local to that region. As to the other Chilean people, they can go to any other major Chilean city and build whatever they want there instead of building it right at Atacama. Nobody is stopping that.

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#162

Post by markvdb »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #71
markvdb wrote: post #64

A cynic would read this as as "I can't believe our (AES) luck. There's a good chance we can squeeze the Europeans for lots of money. We'll gladly share some of the proceeds with the new US president's cronies for having them do the haggling."

You want a real conspiracy theory? How about this: some rich Thirty Meters Telescope patron saw the peril the project has been in and set out to sabotage the ELT! Of course, the ELT is proper funded, so the best he can do is making it useless by ruining it's sky for a decade with construction dust and light.

Of course this is not about someone having for sole purpose to sabotage the ELT. Someone at AES could have had a run-of-the-mill business plan. They go ahead with it despite scientific objections because their profits > science. Then the election happens, and it's a win-win for them from a business point of view. They get unexpected free leverage from a more transactional presidential administration to either drop the plan and get extra compensation.

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#163

Post by kbolino »

Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #148
kbolino wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though it may never prove viable, hydrogen from electrolysis of water creates no emissions other than oxygen. While large ships may be able to use nuclear power directly, the risks of a tenfold increase in small floating nuclear reactors in civilian hands are not trivial. Hydrogen provides a way to keep power generation centralized, secure, and efficient while also distributing it where needed. But this assumes an ex…

I don't disagree that nuclear propulsion has a long way to go before becoming safe enough for civilian use and might require extra security and regulation forever, but we need to do something other than dumping bunker fuel waste into the sea and atmosphere even coubting in several terrorist attacks and accidents it might still end up killing less people using nuclear. As you say going with hydrogen and by extension a…

I think most of the heat and fuel will get wasted anyway. A nuclear-powered cargo ship is going to be closer to a nuclear-powered submarine than a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, in terms of the number of people being supported and the needs beyond propulsion. That means running the reactor below its optimal fuel efficiency, and then intentionally discarding a portion of its heat most of the time to retain some spare capacity for demand spikes and emergencies. Of course, small-scale nuclear reactors are an active area of research, but AFAIK the results haven't been promising yet. So it's an avenue, but not the only one.

Running a reactor full-bore on shore, pumping ocean water, desalinizing it, electrolyzing it to hydrogen, cryogenically separating nitrogen from air, and combining the result to produce ammonia, might look really inefficient in isolation, but might be efficient enough when compared against the alternative. When the costs of logistics, personnel, and capital are accounted for, it might even come out ahead. That having been said, the amount of waste oxygen this would produce is immense, and could create risks of its own. Ammonia is also more likely to produce NOx when combusted in air than hydrogen is, so that's not great, either.

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#164

Post by fnordpiglet »

fastball wrote: post #147
justlikereddit wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turn the windmills off too because turbulence. Actually turn the entire facility off because again being a hotspot causes turbulence. Why don't we build an all night biker bar next door to your home? It won't cause you any problems like noise or nuisance because they cal always turn off the music or keep closed all night?

Energy for the many is more important than astronomy for the few. Hopefully in the future we have more robust energy production (this is a great example of why green energy proponents need to support nuclear – it has far fewer externalities like this) and then we can reclaim the area for astronomical use. That is my point. Nothing is actually destroyed, unlike with other types of pollution. Light pollution is literal…

It’s a lot easier to move a project that hasn’t started than to turn off a project that’s become necessary. Once a project like this is built the investment is so large and returns so desired and the workers lives have moved there it’ll never - in any meaningful sense - be turned off.

Or, they could just build elsewhere.

Astronomy and science is not for the few - it’s for everyone everywhere until the end of history. The energy produced in this project is for the project not for the many. The project is for profit, and the output is short lived consumed by the relative few compared to science which benefits all people from then on.

I’m not saying don’t build the project. Just build it somewhere else where we’ve fucked it up already. The fact this is a singular resource means that’s literally everywhere all over the earth other than this one location.

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#165

Post by post-it »

Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #146
post-it wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear would not make sense at all for long distance sea travel. Naval reactors require highly enriched fuel in order to be compact enough, so they could never be widespread on civilian ships for fear of proliferation. They're also extraordinarily expensive and require a specialized crew, and their power output is overkill for a cargo ship (but they can't really be scaled down much further).

The only real synthetic alternative is ammonia which brings it's own host of problems and potential for malicious use. while your arguments are valid, i think we can overcome most of the problems you mention with more research. at some point we'll need to make the hard decision to either give up on the environment or go nuclear and accept the extra cost of safeguarding it. It simply seems there's no other realistic a…

There are plenty of options that are more realistic than ship-based nuclear, such as sails and biofuels.

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#166

Post by defrost »

Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #146
post-it wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear would not make sense at all for long distance sea travel. Naval reactors require highly enriched fuel in order to be compact enough, so they could never be widespread on civilian ships for fear of proliferation. They're also extraordinarily expensive and require a specialized crew, and their power output is overkill for a cargo ship (but they can't really be scaled down much further).

The only real synthetic alternative is ammonia which brings it's own host of problems and potential for malicious use. while your arguments are valid, i think we can overcome most of the problems you mention with more research. at some point we'll need to make the hard decision to either give up on the environment or go nuclear and accept the extra cost of safeguarding it. It simply seems there's no other realistic a…

> The only real synthetic alternative is ammonia

This is untrue.

Maersk launch a commercial 172-metre container ship running on run entirely on green methanol a bit over a year ago and has 25 more new green methanol ships in the build pipeline.

Australian companies have already contracted to supply green methanol sourced from solar farms after their build and trial of methanol shipping (tugboats) in Singapore.

> It simply seems there's no other realistic alternative.

You say that, the world disagrees.

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#168

Post by fastball »

oldherl wrote: post #159
fastball wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy for the many is more important than astronomy for the few. Hopefully in the future we have more robust energy production (this is a great example of why green energy proponents need to support nuclear – it has far fewer externalities like this) and then we can reclaim the area for astronomical use. That is my point. Nothing is actually destroyed, unlike with other types of pollution. Light pollution is literal…

The problem is that the industrial project will attract more people to the site, and a new town would be built with families living there. So even in the imagined best scenario, when you shut down this project, lots of people would lose their jobs. They would have to do some other businesses to support themselves. The light pollution won't be eliminated.

Actually, in my imagined best scenario, we would develop better means of producing energy that make a solar farm in the middle of the desert less attractive, causing working there to become less lucrative and encouraging people to find new jobs. The megaproject winds down naturally due to that changing economic landscape (like how I expect the town where I grew up in Texas to die when the oilfield workers no longer frequent it), and the dark zone is reclaimed for astronomy or whatever.

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#169

Post by Galaxeblaffer »

post-it wrote: post #165
Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only real synthetic alternative is ammonia which brings it's own host of problems and potential for malicious use. while your arguments are valid, i think we can overcome most of the problems you mention with more research. at some point we'll need to make the hard decision to either give up on the environment or go nuclear and accept the extra cost of safeguarding it. It simply seems there's no other realistic a…

There are plenty of options that are more realistic than ship-based nuclear, such as sails and biofuels.

biofuels are not green and require huge land mass and come on dude, sails, really ?

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#170

Post by post-it »

Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #169
post-it wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of options that are more realistic than ship-based nuclear, such as sails and biofuels.

biofuels are not green and require huge land mass and come on dude, sails, really ?

Biofuels are carbon neutral. They require land, but a single engineered biofuel crop could grow on land that other crops couldn't. It's a promising use for the Canadian tundra that's melting.

Sails are very promising - a cargo ship would need enough fuel to maneuver in port and to generate electricity en route, but for most of the trip it could rely on (computer-controlled) sails.

Neither of these options are mature today, but they're a lot closer than nuclear-powered cargo ships.

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