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The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

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Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#31

Post by matt4077 »

mirko22 wrote: post #5

More and more people are turning to Molten Salt Nuclear Reactors, like Liquid Fluoride Thorium Breeders, If Kirk Sorensen and others are right this will revolutionize energy (and probably not just energy but mining, water desalination etc.) as we know it unlike wind or solar ever could. Natural gas and coal should die once and for all as they are as dirty as it gets. I strongly believe we are ready for truly nuclear…

Yeah, and fusion is just around the corner...

I wonder why the tech community has this infatuation with nuclear power. Ever since I registered my three-digit slashdot account, I've been reading exactly this post, just that the type of reactor people dream of seems to change every five years or so. Good to know it's "Liquid Fluoride Thorium Breeders", right now.

Meanwhile, solar power has lowered prices by a factor of 10 or so and is on a clear trajectory to beat fossile fuels on costs, without subsidies.

I'm suspecting there is something cultural going on here–maybe some instinct to seek out what others perceive as dangerous? Beats me...

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#32

Post by smohare »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #15
shuntress wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't I believe them? Assuming they are pointing to the datacenter equivalents of wind/solar/nuclear energy as the reason why datacenter use is shrinking. Edit: Did you mean to imply that Coal is not actually going away because the 'cheaper alternatives' are fake?

Wind and solar are non-starters. They're more expensive than coal and they can't cover base load. Nuclear could cover base load but is orders of magnitude more expensive (up-front) than coal. Huge investment, huge regulatory burden, huge political risk. Until recently, we hadn't built a new nuclear plant in the country for decades. [0] Coal is cheap and reliable. Always has been. What's killing coal is low, non-volat…

Coal has vast negative externalities. The toll on health and lost productivity alone are large, not to mention its affects on the climate.

http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?Rec...

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#33

Post by matt4077 »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #15
shuntress wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't I believe them? Assuming they are pointing to the datacenter equivalents of wind/solar/nuclear energy as the reason why datacenter use is shrinking. Edit: Did you mean to imply that Coal is not actually going away because the 'cheaper alternatives' are fake?

Wind and solar are non-starters. They're more expensive than coal and they can't cover base load. Nuclear could cover base load but is orders of magnitude more expensive (up-front) than coal. Huge investment, huge regulatory burden, huge political risk. Until recently, we hadn't built a new nuclear plant in the country for decades. [0] Coal is cheap and reliable. Always has been. What's killing coal is low, non-volat…

Coal production hasn't actually changed that much over the last decades. It has just moved west, and become muh more efficient.

(Unfortunately...)

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#34

Post by dangerlibrary »

smohare wrote: post #32
dangerlibrary wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wind and solar are non-starters. They're more expensive than coal and they can't cover base load. Nuclear could cover base load but is orders of magnitude more expensive (up-front) than coal. Huge investment, huge regulatory burden, huge political risk. Until recently, we hadn't built a new nuclear plant in the country for decades. [0] Coal is cheap and reliable. Always has been. What's killing coal is low, non-volat…

Coal has vast negative externalities. The toll on health and lost productivity alone are large, not to mention its affects on the climate. http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?Rec...

That's true, and unrelated to the conversation at hand or anything I said. If those externalities were priced in, much of the relative cost description I gave would be wrong.

But they aren't. That's not to say they shouldn't be - just that right now the fact is that they aren't.

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#35

Post by epistasis »

matt4077 wrote: post #31
mirko22 wrote: post #5

More and more people are turning to Molten Salt Nuclear Reactors, like Liquid Fluoride Thorium Breeders, If Kirk Sorensen and others are right this will revolutionize energy (and probably not just energy but mining, water desalination etc.) as we know it unlike wind or solar ever could. Natural gas and coal should die once and for all as they are as dirty as it gets. I strongly believe we are ready for truly nuclear…

Yeah, and fusion is just around the corner... I wonder why the tech community has this infatuation with nuclear power. Ever since I registered my three-digit slashdot account, I've been reading exactly this post, just that the type of reactor people dream of seems to change every five years or so. Good to know it's "Liquid Fluoride Thorium Breeders", right now. Meanwhile, solar power has lowered prices by a factor of…

I've noticed that too, and though I think there's maybe a tiny bit of wanting to counteract the public perception of nuclear as more dangerous than other sources, I think that it probably has other tech related ambitions.

Science fiction commonly has nuclear reactors at the core of energy for space travel. For extremely long hauls it's compact in terms of volume and weight. As far as I can tell.

So nuclear has a history of being the "future." So tech-related people like it for that reason. We're not going to get personal jet-cars for transit either, most likely. But there's that hint of a dream in tech culture.

Any reasonable carbon-neutral energy plan that I've seen uses at least a bit of nuclear. It won't be the backbone, and it's unlikely that its performance characteristics or cost will change much, but the rest of the century will likely see a consistent amount of nuclear energy, given the longevity of existing reactors.

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#36

Post by mikeash »

matt4077 wrote: post #31
mirko22 wrote: post #5

More and more people are turning to Molten Salt Nuclear Reactors, like Liquid Fluoride Thorium Breeders, If Kirk Sorensen and others are right this will revolutionize energy (and probably not just energy but mining, water desalination etc.) as we know it unlike wind or solar ever could. Natural gas and coal should die once and for all as they are as dirty as it gets. I strongly believe we are ready for truly nuclear…

Yeah, and fusion is just around the corner... I wonder why the tech community has this infatuation with nuclear power. Ever since I registered my three-digit slashdot account, I've been reading exactly this post, just that the type of reactor people dream of seems to change every five years or so. Good to know it's "Liquid Fluoride Thorium Breeders", right now. Meanwhile, solar power has lowered prices by a factor of…

Solar and wind weren't all that practical until relatively recently (the past five years or so?). If you've been following this stuff a long time, nuclear really was the one hope for getting away from fossil fuels. It takes a long time for people's thinking to readjust once something like that changes.

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#37

Post by ZeroGravitas »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #34
smohare wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coal has vast negative externalities. The toll on health and lost productivity alone are large, not to mention its affects on the climate. http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?Rec...

That's true, and unrelated to the conversation at hand or anything I said. If those externalities were priced in, much of the relative cost description I gave would be wrong. But they aren't. That's not to say they shouldn't be - just that right now the fact is that they aren't.

If I worked in an industry, and a new competitor came out that was initially more expensive, but killed less people, I'm not sure I'd be that surprised if my work started to dry up in favor of the less deadly alternative(s).

If at least one of the alternatives was cheaper too, then I would surmise the game was up.

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#38

Post by shuntress »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #28
shuntress wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should have included natural gas. Yes wind/solar/nuclear aren't going to fully replace coal but any share of energy production they pick up is share that coal can't fill. That plus improved efficiency and automation reduces the need for 'coal jobs'. I get that it's not a straight forward as miners plugging their ears and closing their eyes while chanting 'coal is here to stay' but the necessity of coal is shrinking…

Absent regulation like a carbon tax that would change the economics substantially, coal is pretty unlikely to disappear completely in our lifetimes. In the short term, there is a lot of regulatory risk involved in natural gas from shale fracking - prices could suddenly skyrocket and having coal as a backup is absolutely essential for power generation companies. In the long term, there is a lot of uncertainty about wh…

I do not need a lesson on empathy.

"We need less workers to meet the demand for coal." "I don't believe you."

Either one is lying or the other is ignorant.

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#39

Post by lettergram »

strictnein wrote: post #19

I'm glad we're leaving a lot of coal in the ground, but for different reasons. If society as a whole ever slides backwards (due to global war, horrific disease, etc), it leaves a lot of fairly easily extractable energy for the future generation that survives. Dark way of looking at it, I know.

There are actually things like peat moss[1], which are a semi-renewable energy, which I see being far more useful in a "dark age" scenario.

Not to say, it's not good to keep coal in the ground for the same reason. Just thought I would share another tid-bit lol

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphagnum

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#40

Post by sfifs »

Mendenhall wrote: post #11

Was hard to get through the rhetoric and falsehoods like "When the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, the marginal cost of that electricity is essentially free" I read on until "The natural gas that comes out of these wells is practically free" Then I had to give up because its obvious propaganda with no real interest in the truth. I am all for clean energy, but unfactual propaganda isnt good for anyone.

Perhaps you misunderstood what marginal cost means. It is the cost of generating one additional unit of power on an already​ existing infrastructure. It takes expense to mine an additional ton of coal, transport it to a power plant, burn it and convert it into electricity even after the underlying infrastructure is setup. It doesn't for solar and wind.
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