Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

briangitt.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 295 posts

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

#231

Post by pfdietz »

nightski wrote: post #215
pfdietz wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So what is? Cost. It's the reason few nuclear plants are being built. No other reason is needed.

I'm not buying that all the solar panels, batteries, and grid infrastructure will produce little waste. Do you have any references to studies this or are you just going by gut feeling?

What specific waste is causing your trepidation? Solar and wind have most of their impact from mundane things like glass, aluminum, and steel. But enormous amounts of these are produced for the rest of the economy (annual world production of steel is nearly 2 gigatonnes). None of them present an insuperable obstacle to a global economy that could function indefinitely.

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

#232

Post by jakewins »

ouid wrote: post #229
jakewins wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of the reliable sources of energy, nuclear is safest and the least subsidized. How do you evaluate this? Do you have a summary of estimated subsidies per MWh for different generators? My understanding is the same as the comment you are responding to, that nuclear subsidies are significant, ~6-10USD/MWh on insurance alone. I would be happy to be wrong on this. On a good day we pay ~EUR25/MWh for nuke electricity in…

First, I want to make it clear that my claims are about relative subsidy, rather than absolute subsidy. Second, the nuclear insurance subsidy is not really a subsidy, since the taxpayer is only on the hook in the case of an accident, which is not only extraordinarily unlikely, but also mitigated many times over. The calculation of the implicit subsidy to nuclear power comes from highly motivated speculative accountin…

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 component of US nuke liability.

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

#233

Post by thomasmg »

ouid wrote: post #178
thomasmg wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar + wind are actually fixing problems. They are not perfect, but as you said, perfect is the enemy of improvement. Solar + wind are cheaper than almost anything else, specially nuclear. They have much less detrimental effects to the local environment than fossile fuels (specially coal). Yes, they are not guaranteed, so you need a grid (which you have), and some batteries (for short-term storage; like batteries of…

>Nuclear is way too expensive, specially if you account for risks of disasters (no insurance company will insure them, so the risk is on the population). This is CATO propaganda. All power generation is subsidized by our incredibly relaxed attitude towards externalities in general. Of the reliable sources of energy, nuclear is safest and the least subsidized.

> All power generation is subsidized

My point is, the combination of wind, solar, storage is orders of magnitude less subsidized. If you account for risks (nuclear) and externalities (fossil fuel). This is not propaganda. But your claims about nuclear are.

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

#234

Post by ZetaZero »

arcticbull wrote: post #162
dpierce9 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is some bad reasoning. 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. Rooftop solar turns 20% of something that would have been 100% wasted into high grade energy. A very efficient coal power plant is 45% efficient before transmissio…

> Solar panels don’t waste sunlight and have no input costs. Not exactly, the point is that building and installing solar panels consumes resources and physical space. A solar plant with 100% efficient panels is 1/10th the size of today's solar plant, and as I mentioned, to generate comparable amounts of power to conventional sources requires huge amounts of landmass. Plus input materials. And it has to be replaced e…

> to generate comparable amounts of power to conventional sources requires huge amounts of landmass.

It would take about 0.01% of the US land area to generate all the electricity we need. Meanwhile we use 30% (over 1000x) to grow food. And if we prioritize solar on rooftops and deserts, we really are not using any useful land.

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

#235

Post by black_puppydog »

macspoofing wrote: post #224
black_puppydog wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why is Germany building natural gas pipelines to ship Russian gas for decades to come? German here. Let me tell you that a lot of us have been asking the same question. :) Your argument seems to be that "they built these pipelines so that must have been a rational decision" but looking at the track record of the conservatives (Merkel's party, "in charge" for 32 out of the last 39 years), their donors, and the just…

The point is, it isn't just Germany. There is no country on Earth that actually replaced fossil fuels with wind/solar. The point with Germany is that you guys invested billions into this, and you still are building pipelines for natural gas and buying coal-derived power from your neighbors.

"we guys" also had Peter Altmaier, Markus Söder, and all the other Conservative leaders who successfully legislated solar & wind to death.

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

#236

Post by jacobsimon »

telchar wrote: post #179
jacobsimon wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds too good to be true! Is geothermal truly renewable? Or is it just abundant enough that it would last us for thousands of years? I wonder if there are other long term side effects of releasing heat from the core.

Most geothermal heat is produced by nuclear decay in subsurface radioisotopes vs gravitational/frictional source or residual heat of planetary formation, so it's effectively renewable at any kind of level of extraction that we might feasibly be able to make use of. "About 2,900 kilometers (1,800 miles) below the Earth’s crust, or surface, is the hottest part of our planet: the core. A small portion of the core’s heat…

Interesting! This might be my favorite type of energy now :D

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

#237

Post by anonymousiam »

lukeschlather wrote: post #228
anonymousiam wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a question for the group: Regardless of whether you advocate for green energy or not, do you think that it's a wise strategy to create an artificial scarcity of fossil fuels to force a transition to green energy? After decades of green energy adoption, the world is still (conservatively) 84% reliant on fossil fuels. Without them, many people would freeze and/or starve, and whole economies would collapse.

I think we should be focusing on creating abundance of clean fuels. I do think it's worthwhile to tax fossil fuels to make people less likely to use them. Probably with dramatic taxes. But really there's no such thing as "natural scarcity" or "natural abundance" these things are all based on our choices. 30 years ago we could have created an abundance of nuclear power and we would be better off. Today it seems like c…

Focusing on clean fuels is just fine. My question had to do with a highly destructive national policy that is doing tremendous damage to the US/world economies (except for Russia and China).

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-lower-gas-prices-boos...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4UWc5JP-2E

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

#238

Post by ouid »

jakewins wrote: post #232
ouid wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I want to make it clear that my claims are about relative subsidy, rather than absolute subsidy. Second, the nuclear insurance subsidy is not really a subsidy, since the taxpayer is only on the hook in the case of an accident, which is not only extraordinarily unlikely, but also mitigated many times over. The calculation of the implicit subsidy to nuclear power comes from highly motivated speculative accountin…

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 definitely an order of magnitude less than the cost of the earthquake and tsunami themselves. A "private think tank" in Japan then wildly conjectured this number to actually be between 400 billion and 700 billion USD, and for some reason, this is the figure that Wikipedia uses. So, interestingly, I am claiming that this is the same phenomenon as before. This think tank might even be the CATO institute, for all we know.

Second, I said for reliable power. That was sneaky of me, but gas, coal, nuclear, and to some extent hydro, are the only reliable power sources I am aware of. Wind is not completely random, but cannot be relied upon, and solar cannot be run at night. Hydro is reliable, but represents a much bigger population risk than nuclear, with no real possibility of safe failure. I like hydroelectric power, I think it's neat, but it's definitely a sleeping dragon.

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

#239

Post by macspoofing »

black_puppydog wrote: post #235
macspoofing wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is, it isn't just Germany. There is no country on Earth that actually replaced fossil fuels with wind/solar. The point with Germany is that you guys invested billions into this, and you still are building pipelines for natural gas and buying coal-derived power from your neighbors.

"we guys" also had Peter Altmaier, Markus Söder, and all the other Conservative leaders who successfully legislated solar & wind to death.

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 that solar and wind cannot actually replace fossil fuels. Solar and Wind are diffuse, intermittent power sources, with no grid-scale battery technology available to bridge that intermittence. Therefore, you need natural gas to use a base load when the sun isn't shining, and the wind isn't blowing. This is also why natural gas companies tend to be one of the biggest supporters of solar and wind.

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

#240

Post by macspoofing »

pfdietz wrote: post #230
macspoofing wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it can do something that wind/solar can't ... it can actually power a modern economy. So fission is a loser, what does that make wind/solar?

Wind/solar can power a modern economy, and probably more cheaply than nuclear can.

There is no country on Earth that is powered by wind/solar or replaced fossil fuels with wind/solar.
Post reply on HN