Fukushima and Nuclear Energy

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PeterC
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Re: Fukushima and Nuclear Energy

Post by PeterC »

The basic problem is energy consumption. There are not many particularly good choices about how it’s generated. Nuclear is clearly safer than, say, coal on any reasonable calculation of total costs, so if the problem you’re trying to solve is less carbon, it’s going to be part of the solution. But the ‘cleaner’/‘renewable’ powergen options all have issues. Nobody really talks about the types of metal you need for solar panels and the magnets in wind turbines, where they’re mined, what the environmental impact is, and how they are reprocessed at end of life (since in recent years we’ve been building rather than decommissioning). Hydro and geothermal are relatively less environmentally costly, though they tend to do a lot of damage to the local environment where they’re built.

Unfortunately as long as the future involves more humans consuming more energy, there isn’t a good solution out there.
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Kim O'Hara
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Re: Fukushima and Nuclear Energy

Post by Kim O'Hara »

Kim O'Hara wrote: Wed Dec 12, 2018 12:04 pm The primary problem has shifted in the last ten years from the political to the economic.
At this point, renewables are so much cheaper (and getting even cheaper, very quickly), and so much quicker to take from bare dirt to finished facility, that nuclear can't compete. Coal can't compete, either - it's now cheaper in some markets to build and run new solar or wind facilities than it is to just keep an existing coal plant running, let alone build a new one.
Here's a good example -
France will save 39 billion euros ($44.5 billion) if it refrains from building 15 new nuclear plants by 2060, and bets instead on renewable energy sources to replace its all its aging atomic facilities, a government agency said.

France should spend 1.28 trillion euros over the next four decades, mostly on clean power production and storage capacities, networks, and imports, according to a report from the country’s environment ministry. If it does this, France would progressively shut down its 58 atomic plants and renewable energy would comprise 95 percent of its electricity output by 2060, up from 17 percent last year.

The development of the so-called EPR nuclear reactors “wouldn’t be competitive for the French power system from an economical standpoint,” the Agence de l’Environnement et de la Maitrise de l’Energie --or Ademe-- said in a statement. The report assumes that the reactors would produce electricity at a cost of 70 euros per megawatt-hour, while the cost of wind and solar power would fall much lower. ...
:reading: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... idestepped

:coffee:
Kim
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Queequeg
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Re: Fukushima and Nuclear Energy

Post by Queequeg »

Thoughts?
Op-ed in the NY Times:
Cut Carbon Through Innovation, Not Regulation

***

On a related note, my mother in law is an experimentalist who works with graphene, which among its many potential applications, might be the basis of future solar tech. We were talking about solar cells and I mentioned a report I read recently that we are going to run out of the rare earth metals needed for current solar cell tech before we actually replace current fossil fuel capacity. She pointed out the current solar technology we have is far from ideal: the environmental pollution from the manufacture of solar panels, their relatively short service life, and environmental issues of disposal.

There's a joke that graphene can do anything except get out of the lab, and I asked her when her graphene would get out. She laughed and suggested that we might have commercial graphene solar applications in a decade, but in the meantime, more might be done to develop power from things like solar water heaters and solar mirror farms that heat molten salt. She also mentioned, but we didn't get into, the possibility of harnessing chlorophyll which is the most efficient substance that turns light into stored energy (in the form of sugar).

If anyone saw the reboot of Battlestar Galactica which aired over a decade ago - basically, robots evolved into biological beings... Maybe our future will involve biologically based computers and energy sources...
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
-Guanding, Perfect and Sudden Contemplation,
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Kim O'Hara
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Re: Fukushima and Nuclear Energy

Post by Kim O'Hara »

Queequeg wrote: Tue Dec 18, 2018 6:48 pm Thoughts?
Op-ed in the NY Times:
Cut Carbon Through Innovation, Not Regulation
Thoughts? Thoughts??

Roughly in order: :rolleye: :crazy: :jawdrop: :toilet: :jedi: :guns:

If you want me to use words instead, I can.
Opinion
Cut Carbon Through Innovation, Not Regulation
People across the world are rejecting the idea that carbon taxes are the answer to lowering emissions.
Oh yeah??
Leaders from nearly 200 countries met in Katowice, Poland, last week and agreed to rules to carry out the Paris climate accord. Now that the 22,000 delegates have returned home, there are three truths they need to recognize to make actual progress in the hard work of lowering carbon dioxide emissions across the globe.
The first is, the climate is changing and we, collectively, have a responsibility to do something about it.
So far, so good.
Second, the United States and the world will continue to rely on affordable and abundant fossil fuels, including coal, to power our economies for decades to come.
That sentence is in complete contradiction to the previous one so, okay, either he's a complete [expletive deleted] moron or he's lying through his teeth and reckons that most people are dumb enough to believe him. Either way, The New York Times should have suggested he re-submit his rubbish to a more appropriate publication ... something like the Dogpatch Rural News. Unless, of course, The New York Times has an agenda of its own, in which case :guns: to it, too.
And third, innovation, not new taxes or punishing global agreements, is the ultimate solution...
And from here on he's pushing a series of BAU non-solutions amongst a lot of false generalisations and dog-whistling. I won't try to take it apart because it's not worth the time.
By John Barrasso
Senator Barrasso, a Republican of Wyoming, is chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee.
Dec. 18, 2018
I knew the Kochtopus had its tentacles deep into the machinery of government but this is beyond belief. Sheesh!

:rolleye:
Kim
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Kim O'Hara
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Re: Fukushima and Nuclear Energy

Post by Kim O'Hara »

Queequeg wrote: Tue Dec 18, 2018 6:48 pm On a related note, my mother in law is an experimentalist who works with graphene, which among its many potential applications, might be the basis of future solar tech. We were talking about solar cells and I mentioned a report I read recently that we are going to run out of the rare earth metals needed for current solar cell tech before we actually replace current fossil fuel capacity. She pointed out the current solar technology we have is far from ideal: the environmental pollution from the manufacture of solar panels, their relatively short service life, and environmental issues of disposal.

There's a joke that graphene can do anything except get out of the lab, and I asked her when her graphene would get out. She laughed and suggested that we might have commercial graphene solar applications in a decade, but in the meantime, more might be done to develop power from things like solar water heaters and solar mirror farms that heat molten salt. She also mentioned, but we didn't get into, the possibility of harnessing chlorophyll which is the most efficient substance that turns light into stored energy (in the form of sugar).

If anyone saw the reboot of Battlestar Galactica which aired over a decade ago - basically, robots evolved into biological beings... Maybe our future will involve biologically based computers and energy sources...
We've had the technology to decarbonise the electricity network for at least five years and it keeps getting incrementally better and cheaper. One local government authority after another (and one corporation after another) has been picking it up and running with it in absence of leadership from state and national governments. It's far cheaper than the alternative (climate collapse) and already cheaper even in the short term than fossil fuels in many locations (I've been keeping tabs on some of it in this thread - https://dharmawheel.org/viewtopic.php?f ... t=60#p2708). All we need is the will.

:namaste:
Kim
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