The IEA is totally not biased against solar. Totally!
https://16iwyl195vvfgoqu3136p2ly-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-...
Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals
181–190 of 248 posts
Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me pull a pro nuclear style argument. Future batteries won't need rare earth metals. Actually this isn't a fair comparison. Batteries that don't need rare earth metals already exist today. Thorium reactors or next gen nuclear plants don't exist at all.
Kinda missing the point. We already live with way more dangerous material than nuclear. Only difference is that most toxic stuff kills us slowly, so we don't notice. Even if new batteries are made of non toxic and recyclable materials, our phones, our electronic is littered with it. And future materials are probably going to be even more exotic.
Not only that, but the only reason nuclear waste is dangerous is that it's radioactive. That is, it's a radiating source of energy. In other words, nuclear waste is dangerous because it's full of unused energy.
The French use breeder reactors to extract this unused energy for more energy. We are literally choosing not to burn all of the nuclear material we have.
It's like taking a train that's got 20 cars full of coal, burning the coal in the first car, and then disposing the "waste coal" in the rest of the cars in a landfill while wringing our hands about the environmental problems that causes.
Future Breeder Reactor Plants on Wikipedia
Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals
#183It’s too late for nuclear. We’re facing 1 meter sea level rise within 20 years. When human civilization collapses I’d rather have a field of unused PV battery cells leaking, than nuclear waste from all the meltdowns around the world.
While I agree about not wanting nuclear waste, a sea level rise of one meter within 20 years is way above the general scientific prediction. In the last 17 years the rise was pretty stable at 3.3mm per year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise
I know it’s been stable but recently there have been signs we’re on the verge of some exponential growth.
Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Keeping the contaminated water out of the groundwater is the big problem.
No, it's not. I never said anything about the ground, contain the water & waste in a tank.
Not to mention the water is optional.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Vitrificatio...
Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 20 years ago was essentially a zero point for the statistic they cite. It was less than 5 gigawatts, anyway. It grew by over 100 times in that 20 years, and it will be "unprecedented" to grow by 5 times in the next 20? Do you expect the growth rate of Google over the next 20 years will be the same as it was between 1999 and today? As things mature you don't get the same level of exponential growth. Meanwhile the su…
Don't forget that part of moving away from carbon is replacing oil and gas heat with heat pumps (or resistive heat.) And furthermore, heating is needed when days are the shortest. We aren't going to heat our homes with solar power.
There have been some efforts to make residential geothermal heat pumps price competitive in many markets. In which case, winter insolation with clouds may actually be enough to heat houses.
I would guess that we'll see far more thermal storage (refrigerators, water heaters, etc...) in households as appliances get smarter.
Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK well I can agree with that! I have never converted an antinuke with that fact. I have converted dozens (at least from absolute rejection to cautious optimism) with 10-15 minute in-person discussions. I have not found out how to scale that. Indeed, this is a sales problem.
The pro-nuclear advocates are usually their own worst enemies. That smug dudebro points-scoring is a huge problem. Then again, I think most people would be a lot more effective at life if they'd sit down and read How to Win Friends and Influence People and other basic sales texts. I'm generally anti-nuclear, but not for safety reasons. I'm sure we can build safe plants. Rather, I distrust institutions , whether gover…
This is a very good point. The shape of society will mirror the shape of its vital infrastructure. Energy is the fungible commodity - you can make virtually anything else with it. Centralize the [electrical] power, and the [political] power will centralize also.
I'm generally pro-nuclear - I think it's astonishing and tragic that we discovered an infinite source of clean energy, and doomed the Earth by failing to switch to it immediately - but the self-organization of the internet holds valuable lessons on the importance of distributed, fault-tolerant structures.
Especially as we enter a time already made uncertain by climate change, perhaps now is not the time to aggressively centralize. Windmills and Tesla walls look distinctly more "apocalypse-proof" than nuclear power stations.
Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals
#187Perhaps this piece (set in Vancouver) is a response to the agency formed in 2009 in response to the IEA's assertions, known as IRENA. https://irena.org/
Here is IRENA's front page article on Vancouver: https://irena.org/newsroom/articles/2019/May/2050--Vancouver...
Vancouver currently uses fossils for 69% of its energy. It's aiming for 100% renewables by 2050.
Since 1986, Vancouver has continued to build its all-electric skytrain system to 50 miles. Automated, it's Canada's longest mass transit system.
Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
You've picked the wrong number of years, the article says But over the next 20 years, nearly five times that amount would need to be added. The current linear growth trajectory is 2,000 GW over 20 years, and that is likely to be a hilarious underestimate.
Why is it likely to be a hilarious underestimate? That seems like a statement that needs some support. Graphs don't go up forever; growth curves level off; growth gets harder the bigger you get. Linear growth forever should not be the default assumption for any energy technology, even one that is growing fast now. Or do I misunderstand what you're saying?
Because people want cheap, cleaner electricity and we haven't used up all that much space yet. Manufacturing capacity is still growing, the rest of the industry is still growing, it's not likely that there will be a year in the next 20 where global installations are smaller than this year.
Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nuclear looks bad if you restrict it to 1940's technology. Which we have done. We don't allow ourselves to dream any more when it comes to nuclear. We are still building the same plants we designed for submarines and bombs, and wondering why they aren't great for power. There are safer, cheaper, lower waste alternatives if we'd allow ourselves to try them (Thorium reactors, for example). Does wind power really reduce…
> Nuclear looks bad if you restrict it to 1940's technology. The research in nuclear is still been done very actively. My country is putting hundreds of millions per year into nuclear research. But even the new technologies are not competitive. The infrastructure and maintenance required for nuclear technologies is vastly more expensive than solar. The thorium hype is moot because nobody ever demonstrated a working m…
Regarding the earth's rotation, this webpage disagrees:
https://climate.ncsu.edu/edu/Drivers
"The rotation of the earth does have an effect on the direction of the wind, but it does not create it. Wind is primarily driven by differences in air pressure. These variations in air pressure are due to temperature differences caused by variations in solar energy received at the surface of the earth."
Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
The pro-nuclear advocates are usually their own worst enemies. That smug dudebro points-scoring is a huge problem. Then again, I think most people would be a lot more effective at life if they'd sit down and read How to Win Friends and Influence People and other basic sales texts. I'm generally anti-nuclear, but not for safety reasons. I'm sure we can build safe plants. Rather, I distrust institutions , whether gover…
This is a very good point. The shape of society will mirror the shape of its vital infrastructure. Energy is the fungible commodity - you can make virtually anything else with it. Centralize the [electrical] power, and the [political] power will centralize also. I'm generally pro-nuclear - I think it's astonishing and tragic that we discovered an infinite source of clean energy, and doomed the Earth by failing to swi…
Eh, nuclear isn't that great. It's taken decades to start even getting close to truly safe, low-waste reactors, and that only due to the considerable public pressure involved after various high-profile accidents. It's pretty cheap in the long run, but the initial costs are extremely high. We can't trust every nation to stick to high standards in terms of safety, so we're running globally at the safety level of the least competent crew of the worst reactor.
At this point, we're rapidly approaching (or already past) the point where renewables are cheaper per kwh in the long term than nuclear, and much cheaper in the short term - without the dependence on the neoliberal hegemony of giant governments and giant corporations and giant finance.
At this point, I'm not too concerned about climate change, largely because there's not much we can do about it. Environmentalism and liberalism are unfortunately full of a bunch of hairshirted Puritan shaming over anyone doing anything that feels happy or successful - denial is a moral good, and allowing ourselves the benefits of abundant energy is a sin. I feel that's driving concerns about global warming more than the actual environmental damage - they finally have an excuse to deny people a good time.
More importantly, denialism won't work. If we cut our consumption by 50% right now (fat chance), it'd just take us 100 years rather than 50 to burn through the same amount of dinosaur. Same long-term damage. The only thing that will work is creating an energy framework (both production and consumption) that doesn't use fossil fuels, but has roughly the same cost (or less) and the same output.
Renewables are on their way to giving us more energy than dinosaurs ever did, at lower cost, without complex technical dependencies, high up-front costs, etc. It's the greatest weapon against the Corporate State since the internet. Why anyone would want nuclear and its dependency on the neoliberal hegemony (especially if they fear concentrated power at all) is beyond me.