DBB 282: sequestering so-called nuclear waste . . . is a non-issue.
BPL: How so? It’s still toxic, needs to be sequestered for thousands of years, and could be refined for bomb material. If it’s all reused in a breeder cycle, diverting some of it for bomb material is even more likely. I don’t see that it’s a non-issue.
100 miles is INSANE. Why spend a huge chunk of change and add incredible weight to a vehicle for minimal value beyond what a 10 mile battery would provide (or negative value since weight kills both acceleration and those highly-polluting tires)?
Well, apart from the over-complication of 3 or 4 energy sources, and IBM claiming they have a new world-beating battery built from seawater (specific chemistry not specified so not subject to detailed analysis), one hell of a lot of driving range could be provided from electric storage as heat in solar salt. You plug in, and heat from a tank of solar salt is tapped to generate juice to charge your battery. This is not at all difficult to do; we are retiring steam turbines that we could retain for on-demand generators, if we wished to do it.
His “Please hate me” attitude is a disjoint issue.
I honestly WISH you would hate me, as long as you grasp the essential issues involved. The issues matter; I don’t.
Given that uranium is a third-rail AND it isn’t “the big leagues” why bother with it in “the farm league”?
HTF, man? The USA is sitting on 500 years of energy requirements as “depleted uranium” and recoverable uranium in used (but not expended) nuclear fuel. We literally do not need thorium for CENTURIES. Fast-neutron reactors can dispose of all of the “long-term waste” problem† even more thoroughly than thorium breeders can (you’ll have some small fraction of U-233 that does not fission through 5 neutron captures and becomes Pu-238, which you cannot fission effectively in a thermal neutron spectrum; fast neutrons fission all Np, Pu, Am and Cu isotopes with sufficiently high probability that you don’t have to worry about buildup).
The real attraction of thorium breeders is the low fissile inventory and consequent rapid doubling time. I recall calculating that a thorium breeder could double its fissile inventory in a couple of years. Have you noticed that none of the proponents of thorium, such as Thorcon, are even going for net breeding? It’s so obviously problematic (weapons proliferation) that nobody wants to touch that. So no, thorium is not the panacea you think it is. Uranium may be where it’s at.
† All transuranics are fast-spectrum fuel and should be consumed. Fission products are not fuel, and there are a few isotopes like Tc-99 and I-129 which hang around a very long time. They are the only true “long-term waste”. But they also have very low heat output, so you can put them in something like a salt dome a la WIPP, seal them up and forget about them. They won’t get out by themselves and sane people won’t go digging for them.
The basic reason Zebra and EP clash is Zebra prefers free markets, while its fairly obvious EP prefers an electricity system run more as a monopoly and by technocrats.
I don’t prefer it. It’s just the natural outcome of the logistics of district heating. If nature doesn’t give you any other options, you accept what you’re given and move on.
Thorium fuel has risks
Simple chemical pathways open up proliferation possibilities for the proposed
nuclear ‘wonder fuel’, warn Stephen F. Ashley and colleagues. https://www.nature.com/articles/492031a
There are reasonable fixes for pollution, including problems cause by mining, although they will of course never satisfy the dark green purists.
Two of the more interesting mining problems involve phosphate and rare earths. Uranium naturally precipitates with phosphate, and both uranium and thorium associate with rare earths in a host of deposits (by themselves or with coal). In the USA, EPA restrictions on “hazardous waste” make many rare earth ores economically difficult or impossible to refine due to their thorium content. There is so much uranium (and its decay daughters) in phosphate rock that some phosphate mines have been declared Superfund sites… with no realistic prospects for “cleanup”.
I’ve got a recipe for de-problematizing these problems:
1. Normalize NORM (Naturally Occuring Radioactive Material). Declare that exposure up to e.g. 10 mSv/yr is harmless and Below Regulatory Concern. Seriously, it IS harmless.
2. Define thorium as a regular heavy metal rather than radwaste. (Make Thorium Gas Lamp Mantles Great Again!)
Let me go over that article hit piece and list what’s so wrong about it.
1. Leads off with a picture of a heap of loose material in a tunnel, with no description in the caption. The implication is that it’s “nuclear waste” though it’s certainly loose soil makes it a pretty egregious falsehood… and that’s just what you see first.
2. There’s no “crisis” of fuel storage, anywhere. Dry-cask storage is perfectly workable and any fuel which won’t fit into the wet pools can go into dry casks.
3. There’s no risk of fire, venting of gases (which are harmless once diluted), environmental contamination (no source of energy to spread anything), the containers are good for a century and terrorists know better than to waste their efforts trying to break steel-reinforced concrete.
4. The whole thing is based on ideological fear-mongering by Greenpeace, one of the usual suspects. They have never told the truth about nuclear energy and are not about to start.
5. One questions what is “regenerative” about e.g. Germany clear-cutting old-growth forests for “biomass energy”. Nuclear is far more ecologically sound.
New to posting here at RC, and admittedly quite the initiate to energy and environment overall.
During a recent local book club discussion I put together some ideas on matters being discussed in the Forced Variations thread here and figured it wouldn’t hurt to get feedback on those ideas, if folks have an interest.
The thoughts can be read at threatvelocity.com. They’re quite brief and massively oversimplified of course, but curious if I’m even vaguely in the ball park so far as my thinking goes.
Al Bundysays
nigelj,
Yeah, the traditional pollution we’re spewing isn’t that big a deal for those who will follow us, but GHG pollution is way long-lived. That will seriously cramp our descendants’ style. Killian’s dream doesn’t work so well if we crank up the heat by 5C. (MRKIA might say, ‘5C? We’re NUMBER 1! 10C is doable!!!’)
Al Bundysays
Speaking of ‘C’s, ain’t it a hoot that Serious People are still talking 1.5 to 2C as if that were any more likely than giving every 10 year old girl her own pony?
Yes, Permaculture us deeply connected to TEK. You damned fools chasing poisonous energies and denying that what already exists can’t possibly, even when there is no other choice, need to listen more than you speak.
Mr. Know It Allsays
235 – BPL
“BPL: Mentira. Your side wants to cut down on immigration by brown people, period. That’s why it’s putting legitimate asylum seekers in concentration camps and separating their families.”
Indeed BPL – mentira – to lie is EXACTLY what you did there. Obama built those camps with chain-link cages and you know it. Nigelj and the rest of the peanut gallery says: “What? Obama did that?” Even leftist “Snopes” says yes, Obama did EXACTLY that:
240 – E-P
“The “communities” from which such people come should be removed from the Americas and sent home; if they hate the people here, this place is anything but “home” to them. They have to go back.”
100% agree. We have ~1400 years of history with one group that says you are correct. A 1400 year trend is a lot longer than 30 years needed to establish “climate”. ;)
Why spend a huge chunk of change and add incredible weight to a vehicle for minimal value beyond what a 10 mile battery would provide (or negative value since weight kills both acceleration and those highly-polluting tires)?
I don’t know about that. The entire Tesla line accelerates like the proverbial bats out of hell. Of course electric motors are incredibly torque-y, but secondarily that extra weight helps traction, I suppose.
Mal, E-P is not applying physics to solving the problem. If he were, he would be able to discuss the issue without using industry jargon that is intended to obfuscate and valorize the existing monopolistic, Authoritarian, paradigm.
You’d be funny if you and your ilk weren’t so damned dangerous. The terms of the field describe the physics. You have zero grasp of the physics, which is why you go off on “obfuscation”, “oppression” and other po-mo BS.You have NOTHING to contribute. You are all but certainly too stupid to be able to comprehend anything that would LET you contribute. A couple days in a pillory might correct your attitude, or it might not. I’d like to see if a good LARTing would fix your problem, but given the sickness of our current society I am doubtful that it’s worth the effort. We are all but certainly best off flushing ones like you and starting over with the rest.
There’s some grandiosity on display, right there. He thinks we’re dangerous? Boy, am I glad this guy isn’t in charge.
On just about everyone’s list of deadly sins, pride is the deadliest, for it enables all others. We’re all guilty, of course, and it’s merely pride to imagine yourself “saved”: fine for you, but what about the rest of us 8^(? Still, when we know it in ourselves, we can at least try to keep a lid on it. Failing that, l’enfer, c’est les autres!
Still on the off-topic immigration stuff, I see, and still either using sources misleadingly or failing to read for comprehension. Oh, and making totally unsupported assertions. Can’t forget that aspect.
nigeljsays
Al Bundy @289,
No I don’t see it like that, and Im not sure you are all that smart or wise. Not on this day anyway:) Xmas hangover perhaps?
I know you were trying to get me to bite like a fish. Ok, it worked.
Firstly I’ve constantly acknowledged our environmental problems on this website, including both pollution, resource scacity and all the rest. How could you not see that? Therefore I certainly dont see the current situation as some jumping off point. That is much to simplistic. I agree to the extent if things dont change, we will leave a waste land of a future to some extent anyway. Reminds me of the TS Eliot Poem The Wasteland.
But its a question of “what things are going bad, and what things should we change and why?” You and others do far too much exaggeration, arm waving and generalising and crazy thinking. Toxic waste from mines is mostly a local problem yet you exaggerate it hugely. Stopping use of technology or radically reducing it to fix environmental pollution problems just isn’t an intelligent sort of response. Its a very blunt instrument.
Solutions have to work and make sense. For someone as solution focused as you you should know that. Regarding resource scarcity, conserving and rationing resources right now will change our lifestyles and only delays the inevitable point where future generations run out. It just buys them a bit more time at xyz level of consumption. So making massive changes isn’t compelling to me. Making some changes makes sense.
I also see little point in advocating grand utopian solutions and massive lifestyle changes and massive reductions in use of materials, because its so unlikely people will be prepared to do that. I advocate plausible solutions, not wishful thinking.
Of course I acknowledge there’s an environmental problem with pollution and resource scarcity. My solution is simple and has the merit that it has some chance of being implemented: Have stronger laws to stop pollution, accept the inevitability of zero gdp growth, waste less, be a little bit less materialistic, and get the size of population down (I acknowledge this is also Zebras big solution and his interesting ideas on it) and of course alternative energy for the climate problem. This is hard work, and not without problems of its own, but it’s feasible.
Of course my scheme is nothing new, its probably the mainstream approach and it doesn’t have a nice catchphrase like “simplification” and its not an environmental philosophy, and it doesn’t press for a utopian society along communal ownership lines. Its a muddle through approach, combining various things, not a headline grabber. But at least it is thought through, and it has a fighting chance of actually gaining traction.
What have you guys got? A lot of wishful thinking.
nigeljsays
Mr KIA @316, I’m not a peanut. And at least Obama didn’t separate mothers and children and try to massively scale back immigration. It’s patently obvious Trump wants to stop all immigration if he can get away with it, and make America a white enclave preferably run by billionaire boomers.
But in the interest of being balanced, I do think the Democrats should be pushing an immigration platform that acknowledges the need for some regulation of immigration. They are tending to be a bit knee jerk in their reaction to things.
Al Bundysays
Guest, thanks for the link. Thorium doesn’t lead to plutonium and U 232 contamination makes the U 233 pathway to proliferation difficult, but not necessarily too difficult for a dedicated actor with serious coin, especially if your workers don’t mind dying of radiation sickness.
There’s a lot of thorium lying around. Neutron sources exist. Thorium power stations are not necessary, and with molten salt they’re probably a more difficult path to a bomb. E-P, what are your thoughts?
________
Kevin McKinney: I don’t know about that. The entire Tesla line accelerates like the proverbial bats out of hell. Of course electric motors are incredibly torque-y, but secondarily that extra weight helps traction, I suppose.
AB: Yep, acceleration should always be supplied solely by electric motors. This allows the engine(s) to be designed to operate in a narrow sweet spot. Engines have two uses. First, as range extenders. You need to go further than 10 miles while using surface streets? Crank up the smaller engine.
Next, you need to travel at significant speed for a significant distance? Once on the highway crank up the larger (but still tiny) cruising engine. The smaller engine will have pre-warmed the oil and the larger engine to an extent so the larger engine never starts “cold”. Thus, the only wear and tear to speak of is to a lawnmower-sized engine. It also means that emissions, which, like wear, are concentrated during initial warm-up, will plummet (the exhaust of the smaller engine’s exhaust treatment system feeds into the larger engine’s exhaust treatment system).
You need to go up a hill or pass another vehicle? You’ll be using the flywheel(s) to dump as much energy into the motor(s) as testosterone demands.
Heavier vehicles will accelerate slower, given the same electric motor(s). Of course, one can add in torque until you hit the real limiting factor: tires. When the weight of the vehicle is such that the tires have optimal flex you’ll have an advantage, but that’s “matching” as opposed to “heaviest vehicle wins”. And remember, batteries may be “able” to fast-charge and fast-discharge but both are highly inefficient and destructive to the most expensive wear item on a vehicle. Batteries and engines are both best used as near-constant power supplies. Note that this usage most likely will result in more efficient and cheaper battery chemistries and all those expensive and inefficient grid-stressors (fast charging stations) become unnecessary.
I’m reminded of a technique I saw at the one tractor pull I attended. A guy attached a pole and an anvil to the front of his tractor to create a torque-suppressor, for want of a better term. The other tractors had to worry about front end lift. He just floored it. Lots of “rolling coal” and one quick tractor!
____
E-P,
Cool find about trucks and CO2 liquification. Unfortunately, it appears to operate based on the assumption that an inefficient engine is used. This changes things…
Thomassays
Civilization itself is managed by damned fools!
Arguing over to be nuclear energy or not nuclear energy is a fools game.
Emotive hand waving about nuclear waste storage equally so. The solutions are already known, the technology already available. That world govts don’t pursue it is not a logical reason to declare they don’t exist or are not real and fit for purpose.
In our extremely pathological world, driven by ego/greed/narcissism and worse, so stupid and ignorant ‘it’ can’t even bring itself to ban/destroy all nuclear arms and war itself, what makes you think it’s going to be able to deploy safe nuclear energy rationally even though they already exist?
Let alone stop global warming increasing to eventually destroy most of ‘civilisation’ itself.
I’m reminded here of educated priests arguing about how many angels could fit on the end of a needle in the 4th century! But whatever floats your boat you’ll keep doing. Exceptions do exist, still the majority of humanity are pathological fools. On all sides of politics. The denial of this truth is far worse than agw/cc denialism, because it encompasses a denial by almost all people and not only a few.
Need some ‘proof’? Logically, were humanity not a collection of pathological fools proper rational effective solutions to stop global warming would already have been put in place. GHG atmospheric levels would already be stabilised and beginning to fall. Plus there would not be a new nuclear arms race unfolding before your eyes.
nigeljsays
Al Bundy @313, my reference to pollution was just that, pollution in the traditional sense, like particulate emissions. CO2 emissions are a different thing, and yes I agree even more problematic for future generations.
We need solutions that work, not just the math’s as EP points out, but things that are acceptable to average people.Some form of alternative energy should be acceptable, massive cuts to levels of consumption would be less acceptable. Yes or no?
William Jacksonsays
319 you’ve got that right KIA spreads hate and lies and wonders why he is not loved.
Just wanted to let you know that I’ve learned more from your comments than just about anyone else here’s comments.
Thank you. That is one of my explicit goals: to back up my claims with evidence, and to provide resources for people who want to learn more. Same story at my blog.
Knowledge is power Power corrupts Study hard Be evil
Your refusal to believe it doesn’t make it false. Calling someone a liar for it is slander.
If there were implementable solutions, wouldn’t they be implemented?
Yucca Mountain is eminently implementable. It has not been implemented because people opposed to it had the power to block it.
France stores all its radioactive byproducts from reprocessing in a single building, under water. Finland is putting their spent fuel 1700 feet down in bedrock. We can reprocess spent fuel and divide it up into 4 streams: recovered uranium, transuranics, short-lived fission products (up to 30.1 years HL) and long-lived fission products (HL upwards of 100,000 years). The former 2 are fuel. We can bury the last two in specialized repositories, though the last doesn’t really need it and we could just dilute it in the oceans where it would only add minimal radioactivity compared to the huge amount of natural K-40.
What, didn’t you realize that the whole world was radioactive from its birth?
sequestering so-called nuclear waste . . . is a non-issue.
How so? It’s still toxic
All the lead, cadmium, arsenic and mercury in the world is toxic and will remain so until the Sun burns out.
needs to be sequestered for thousands of years
Only the transuranics and two specific FP isotopes (Tc-99 and I-129) last “thousands of years”. Transuranics are fuel which should not be thrown away. Everything else decays to less than the activity of the parent ore in 500 years. There are wooden buildings in Europe older than 500 years and still in use.
could be refined for bomb material.
Nope. Totally wrong isotope mix.
If it’s all reused in a breeder cycle, diverting some of it for bomb material is even more likely.
As Little Rocket Man found out when his first tries at plutonium bombs produced sub-kiloton fizzles, it is not as easy to make weapons-grade material as neophytes think. As soon as you get some Pu-239, it also starts absorbing neutrons and 35% of it becomes Pu-240. Pu-240 is such a headache that the one and only test of “reactor-grade” Pu in a bomb, made in a British MAGNOX reactor and only irradiated for a couple of months, was deemed a failure. Material that’s been in a high neutron flux for months or years won’t go “boom” for you; “pop” is the best you’ll get.
They’re quite brief and massively oversimplified of course, but curious if I’m even vaguely in the ball park so far as my thinking goes.
You’re thinking way too small and haven’t figured out that Mark Z. Jacobson is a charlatain (he’s financed by money from oil baron Jay Precourt, how could he be anything else? read the takedown by Clack et al. to see just how much fakery is involved).
Want to make yourself useful? Dig up info on Hansen’s favorite remedy, enhanced weathering. Find out just where big deposits of ultramafic rocks are, then figure out how much is required to soak up 60-100 ppm of CO2, and how much energy it will take to mine and crush it to sizes which weather quickly. I doubt that we’re short of places to put it. Some have suggested spreading it on land with warm weather and rainfall, but using it to build up beaches which are going underwater due to sea-level rise and letting wave action wear off the CO2-saturated outer layers of granules is good too.
The entire Tesla line accelerates like the proverbial bats out of hell.
So did the lineal ancestor to all the Teslas, the tzero. It used off-the-shelf lead-acid batteries and had a pretty poor range, but it was quick. So were the White Zombie and Killacycle.
Power has not been an issue for electric vehicles since the nineteenth century; the problem has always been range (energy) and battery life. Energy matters much less for a hybrid. For a sensible vehicle, you need power and battery life. Lead-acid, while highly recyclable, has always been pretty poor for lifespan unless e.g. kept on float-charge all the time like standby phone system batteries. This isn’t compatible with driving on electric power. NiMH and Li-ion are far better for that.
Note that Tesla had to limit power output from its laptop-cell based batteries in order to maintain life. This suggests that other battery chemistries are superior for hybrids, which have much smaller batteries and require much higher power densities. But yeah, if you can get that power density you can do 0-60 in what used to be ridiculously low times without burning fuel. Ultracapacitors are rather pricey for the energy but have power density that makes batteries turn green with envy.
Thorium doesn’t lead to plutonium and U 232 contamination makes the U 233 pathway to proliferation difficult, but not necessarily too difficult for a dedicated actor with serious coin, especially if your workers don’t mind dying of radiation sickness.
Plutonium may be the lesser threat. If you have a net thorium breeder MSR, you can isolate U-233 without the U-232.†
This is probably why NOBODY is trying to make a pure thorium MSR. Thorcon is going for 50% replacement of LEU with thorium, at most.
There’s a lot of thorium lying around. Neutron sources exist. Thorium power stations are not necessary, and with molten salt they’re probably a more difficult path to a bomb. E-P, what are your thoughts?
I fear that the cat is out of the bag regarding bombs, at least for state actors. It’s 70-yr-old technology. If Lil’ Rocket Man can do it, pretty much any decent-sized country can.
† The intermediate between Th-232 and U-233 is Pa-233. This has a huge neutron-capture cross section and a 27-day half-life, so neutron captures in it are a BIG problem (you get non-fissile U-234); you either have to run at VERY low neutron flux or pull the Pa-233 out of your reactor until it finishes decaying to uranium. The oxidation states of Pa-233 make it fairly simple to pull it out of a molten salt mixture into molten bismuth; when Pa-233 decays to uranium, it migrates right back. All you need to do is remove some of that bismuth and you get a stream of pretty pure U-233.
IIRC, pure U-233 has a spontaneous fission rate of roughly 0.6/kg/sec. You can make a gun-style bomb out of that, a la the “Little Boy”; you don’t need fancy implosion systems like plutonium. Thorium MSRs might actually be worse proliferation risks than uranium FBRs (imagine that!).
nigeljsays
Al Bundy @322, I agree molten salt thorium looks attractive as its safer than current systems and smaller units can be built than water cooled systems. But I recall reading that Americas government has killed it dead because the materials can be turned into a bomb. This looks like a hard roadblock to dismantle.
Killiansays
Children, if you’re reduced to pointing out typos and word usage rather than germane content, you’re… children. While I play an editor and language instructor in real life, like the old saws about doctors being sick and mechanics having broken down cars, I don’t give the slightest damn about editing my on-line posts, so things sneak through – particularly typos. But, again, only those who are childish and petty make that the focus of their debates.
Greenpeace is not objective, but you dolts are? Save your ad homs for idiots who can’t tell that’s what you’ve done. The issues raised by that piece are legit, and you all know it. There is leakage all over the world. There are hundreds of accidents all over the world every year, etc.
The key issue for nuclear, however, is long-term effects. There are large areas of the planet that are now not habitable due to the use of nuclear. That’s all you need to know. Even so, it’s absolutely not needed to solve any of our problems – and has never solved the problem it was created for: Cheap energy for the masses.
It cannot, will not be scaled globally. It will, and already does, do massive damage. It’s useless to drill down to secondary, tertiary, and lower, issues when these points cannot be dismissed.
It’s poisonous over extremely long time frames, the waste cannot be managed, it’s not cheap, it’s not sustainable. There are zero reasons to discuss it.
So, idiots, stop discussing it. Why idiots? The world is dying and you’re discussing issues that are irrelevant. That’s idiotic.
Killiansays
Re 309 Al Duncy said AB: Making multiple elementary errors in a single short sentence while delivering an insult is stupid beyond belief.
But funny as Hell. Keep it up, doofus.
In fact, errors are in no way an indicator of intelligence, even when mistakes. The irony of you saying something that *is* stupid about something that is not…
Bunch of damned fools have made these boards useless… Shut up abput nuclear, shut up about denial, idjits.
nigeljsays
Adam Lea @132 (on the UV Thread)
“Thirdly, there is the problem that significantly reducing ones carbon footprint requires taking sacrifices for little tangible benefit…. (you list some things you did like cycling, but mention that you gave up on some of them)”
I have made several lifestyle changes to reduce my carbon footprint, but I can’t get enthusiastic to do much more. I’ve bought a small fuel efficient car (by my standards), mostly use buses, rarely fly and I eat a low meat diet, and I’m actually pretty happy about this, but I would have done some of these things anyway regardless of the climate issue. Parking a small car is easier and I don’t love travel. There is no way I would go cold in winter, huddling under blankets or go cycling through our nightmare traffic. So I identify with your concerns.
“This is the fundamental problem as I see it, how do you get every individual to work together on reducing carbon footprint in a way that is acceptable to the population at large, because telling people they have to give up things they enjoy and/or enhance convenience is not going to work. If there is an answer to this I would love to hear it, if only to replace despair with hope and optimism.”
Exactly. However most people will probably make some changes, even if they see it as an inconvenience, because they want to be seen to be doing something, but it is at risk of being tokenism, and easy stuff like a few LED lightbulbs.
Things would change more robustly if people were either pushed or given incentives, or both. For example our government is changing the tax structure to favour electric cars which will make them far more attractive financially. Other countries do the same thing but with government subsidies. But you cant do this for every lifestyle issue, like free bicycles, because it would become a nightmare of complexity, and too onerous on governments finances. For this reason a carbon tax and dividend that captures everything in a simpler way has merit, and some flow through to promoting lifestyle changes.
None of this is new or riveting stuff, but I think its the sensible approach. The sticking point is political anti tax ideology and scaremongering. I don’t understand these freaks. You can make carbon tax legislation have an expiry date, and so it has to be voted back in periodically, so that it can’t just last forever and permanently make government bigger or whatever bogeyman scares people.
The other thing that I was thinking about is that if there was more movement to decarbonise electricity grids, people might feel more inclined to make personal efforts because they would feel their efforts are adding to other big efforts. But it could possibly go in the opposite direction if people feel the grid is being fixed then why should they do anything personally? Things aren’t ever simple.
But the electricity grid must be modernised to alternative energy, period, full stop. If we don’t do that, I think we are (insert appropriate swear word of your choice).
There is scaring the hell out of each other about the climate issue, and thats ok to a point, but you have to be careful not to do it constantly, exaggerate and get hysterical, because this can have the reverse effect and can get quite depressing. And there is ethical and moral pleading with people. Of course we see plenty of all of this happening. It’s hard to say how effective it is and some people dont like it, but perhaps it all adds together. Remaining silent about the issues doesn’t look like a great idea to me. When has that ever lead to change?
nigeljsays
David B. Benson @311
“Commenters nigelj and zebra in particular might care to learn how a nominally “free market” for electrical power actually functions. Here is one way:”
Thanks, looks like good value. And here is our way:
“Commenters nigelj and zebra in particular might care to learn how a nominally “free market” for electrical power actually functions. Here is one way:”
Yes, EVs are getting cheaper, but they aren’t at lifecycle parity. Your link has several errors.
They didn’t use Tesla’s rate, about $0.30US/kwh, which is about quadruple their $0.087CAD/kwh. A blended number would have shown a lack of partisanship. And note that that $0.30 is measured at the plug. Losses within the vehicle are ignored. You ain’t getting a KWH when the plug says it supplied a KWH (I’m guessing that Tesla measures in the way that makes them look the best). Fast charging is all about baking batteries.
They assumed that when the EV’s battery dies (10 or so years) the cars will be toast. When is the last time you saw an ICE vehicle die in 10 years unless it got totaled in an accident? Vehicles last 20+ years. My 2012 is still “new”.
They didn’t add in the extra miles EVs must travel to find chargers. They also discounted the driver’s wasted time to zero. Heck, even charging at home every day is more of a pain than occasionally filling up. Dragging and storing cables is not fun, especially when you need to drag them out a door and out to the street. No garage? You bought a PITA, son.
They didn’t make the tax adjustment required. If all vehicles are EVs then all road taxes must come from EVs. Thus, the seriously high taxes levied on petrol must be “virtually levied” on EVs, unless you’re partisan.
They didn’t use the best petrol-only vehicle, the Hyundai Ionic non-plug-in hybrid but a crappy Civic that gets half the MPG. Why?? Partisanship is the only answer.
They didn’t add in the extra cost in tires. EVs are heavy. This is also a pollution problem. Tires “wear” by shedding microplastics. Not fun to breathe and God knows what the environmental consequences are. This might be offset with oil changes and air filters (don’t remember how they handled those).
And as my description of a quadbrid vehicle shows, EVs provide ZERO increase in performance and are surely going to fall further behind in cost of ownership.
And note that a quadbrid vehicle does not suffer from reduced efficiency in winter since the engine box is insulated and the engines are right-sized. There ain’t hundreds of pounds of metal doing diddly and all that precious heat is conserved, as opposed to dumped as fast as possible via a huge energy drain (a radiator). In fact, a quadbrid vehicle gets better MPG in the winter since engine efficiency is influenced by the relative distance from absolute zero between the hot side (2500F) and cold side (atmospheric) of the engine.
And since coal is worse than oil and natural gas leaks, especially when fracked, there isn’t a GHG rationale for EVs. They currently suck just as bad as ICEs currently suck, climatewise. Well, at least in shithole countries like the USA. Norway is another matter… (ain’t misparaphrasing Donald Drumpf fun?)
nigeljsays
Al Bundy, regarding my rant @320, that was probably a bit rough and wandered away from your point, but I just wanted to describe how I see things, and didnt have time to edit it. Dont take it as a criticism of your world view.
BPL: But he didn’t put legitimate asylym seekers in them, nor separate children from their families. Stop lying.
zebrasays
#318 Mal Adapted,
Grandiosity? More like drunk, and definitely not with power. (heh…power, get it?)
Anyway, my main concern is that the physics/engineering stuff is not mis-represented; he seems to be used to spouting incoherent and incorrect stuff without being challenged by people who know better. We get upset when the Denialists do it on climate, and to me this is pretty much the same.
Even people without the background should be able to spot the obvious:
He says that “volt-amps is not power”, even though he has used the term “reactive power” god-knows how many times in previous comments.
He makes the absurd statement that a capacitor does not store energy, and then says “whatever trivial amount of energy it stores”.
Kinda weird, for someone claiming expertise, don’t you think?
I don’t know his actual background, but he sounds very much like someone who got a job in the utility sector about 50 years ago and hasn’t needed to go beyond plugging numbers into equations by rote. And who is a memorizer, of course, who thinks that recitation is the same as explanation… like the people who memorize Korans and Bibles and such.
The reality is that there is no “physics” that causes blackouts because of using wind or solar. What’s happening is that all over the world, there are smart young people figuring out how to implement and bring to realization a new paradigm for this stuff… electricity, transportation, whatever.
And we have, of course, the Authoritarian types who can’t accept being replaced, offering up their narrow and non-transferable expertise on making buggy-whips.
Al Bundysays
nigelj: What have you guys got? A lot of wishful thinking.
AB: Wow. Never thought I’d see you channeling E-P. We’re a diverse lot with many and varied ideas. And yes, much/most of it boils down to “If only…”. Of course, you are included in “us guys”…
As is generally true with our communications, I wasn’t refuting you but adding to. And yeah, I don’t even have to go back a page to find the comment you’re commenting about to believe that it contained a little ribbing at your expense. That’s what friends are for, eh Mr Fish?
Note that I clarified (realified? walked back?) my environmental destruction comment, saying that traditional pollution pales in comparison to the “newfangled” GHG pollution. Going further, I generally disagree with cleaning up Superfund sites. Fence them off and let nature have some space (like the Chernobyl exclusion zone), with the caveat that groundwater can be an issue. Of course, groundwater issues will probably drop way down humanity’s list of concerns when ecosystems start collapsing. Or, perhaps more accurately, when ecosystem collapse gets too advanced to ignore.
As an aside, I don’t drink to the point of poisoning. I limit myself to very dilute dark red wine. So no post holiday hangovers for me. :-)
Al Bundysays
E-P: What, didn’t you realize that the whole world was radioactive from its birth?
AB: Good thing, too. Radioactivity drives the Earth’s magnetic field and volcanoes/plate tectonics, both of which are absolutely required for us to survive.
Even more importantly, without radioactivity we couldn’t have helium balloons. What’s the point of a balloon if if doesn’t float? So we’d be giving our kids hydrogen balloons. Imagine the chaos…
Al Bundysays
Killian: In fact, errors are in no way an indicator of intelligence, even when mistakes. The irony of you saying something that *is* stupid about something that is not…
AB: OK, I’ll translate “stupid” for you: Drunk as a Skunk.
Al Bundysays
E-P,
I’ve read that capacitors require a resistor and so are limited to below 50% efficiency. Ultracapacitors would make a grand replacement for a quadbrid’s flywheel if this limit isn’t real. (The storage needed is whatever will get the vehicle up to top speed. 0-90 and 90-0 without messing with the battery or brakes)
The key issue for nuclear, however, is long-term effects. There are large areas of the planet that are now not habitable due to the use of nuclear. That’s all you need to know.
You are the poster child for “everything you know is wrong”. Almost the entire Fukushima evacuation zone has already been cleared for re-habitation by the severely radio-phobic Japanese government. Look up “Chernobyl babushkas” and “Chernobyl horses” to see just how “not habitable” that bit of stupidity left the zone. The wildlife is doing beautifully, given that there are so few humans to bother them now.
Even so, it’s absolutely not needed to solve any of our problems – and has never solved the problem it was created for: Cheap energy for the masses.
But don’t look at France, which went nuclear in the 80’s to get away from costly oil and is enjoying cheap energy for the masses going on 40 years later. It’s the fact that slays your theory.
Running all the economies of the world on uranium would require perhaps 6-10,000 of those 32,000 tons.
It’s useless to drill down to secondary, tertiary, and lower, issues when these points cannot be dismissed.
Everything you’ve written so far has been totally false. Why do you do this? Are you a paid agent of fossil fuel companies (which is what Greenpeace is, as that’s where lots of their money comes from)?
It’s poisonous over extremely long time frames, the waste cannot be managed, it’s not cheap, it’s not sustainable.
500 years tops, compared to atmospheric CO2 which will hang around for thousands of years… unless we find the emissions-free energy to do something about it.
There are zero reasons to discuss it.
So, idiots, stop discussing it.
Looks like desperation talking. “OMG, the climate community might actually unite around a REAL SOLUTION (that doesn’t involve us taking control of all the wealth of the west)! SHUT IT DOWN!”
Greenpeace is not objective, but you dolts are?
Greenpeace claims that a bit of radiation will end life on earth, but evidence shows that rats BENEFIT from low-level radiation exposure, living at least 25% longer than controls. Scientists for Accurate Radiation Information is a group demanding that evidence-based standards replace our current paranoia-based ones. This will benefit people in a host of ways, including better medical treatment from faster, better and cheaper imaging. Plus, of course, lots of clean energy.
The other thing that I was thinking about is that if there was more movement to decarbonise electricity grids, people might feel more inclined to make personal efforts because they would feel their efforts are adding to other big efforts. But it could possibly go in the opposite direction if people feel the grid is being fixed then why should they do anything personally?
On the contrary, if the grid is carbon-free it suddenly becomes much easier to take personal action: whenever you replace a carbon-emitting thing, buy an electric one. When your car wears out, buy a plug-in hybrid or EV. Electric dryer and range replace gas. Heat pump replaces furnace. Suddenly these things are huge helps and even total solutions.
What’s nigh-impossible to do with a grid that’s even 20% fossil-powered is easy with 100% emission-free.
They didn’t use Tesla’s rate, about $0.30US/kwh, which is about quadruple their $0.087CAD/kwh.
You don’t need to use a Tesla-owned charger unless you’re going a relatively long way. Almost all of your charging will be done at home. Plugging in a cable takes a lot less time than regular runs to gas stations.
There are LOTS of free chargers out there, both public and private. Counting on my mental fingers, I know of 16 Tesla and 8 J1772 chargers within 20 miles of me. All but one is free. Plus, with a “convenience cord”, any NEMA outlet becomes a charger.
Heck, even charging at home every day is more of a pain than occasionally filling up. Dragging and storing cables is not fun, especially when you need to drag them out a door and out to the street.
I have driven a PHEV for 6.5 years now. I don’t drag cables out doors; I keep one end plugged into a 3-prong NEMA socket in my garage, and the other end plugs into my car. I bought a kit for a wall-mounted charger which would charge more than twice as fast, but there is so little inconvenience involved with my current arrangement that I haven’t been motivated to put it together.
For those who really hate cords, there are inductive chargers that you just park on top of and they do their thing. I think this is for people much lazier than I am.
DBB 282: sequestering so-called nuclear waste . . . is a non-issue.
BPL: How so? It’s still toxic, needs to be sequestered for thousands of years, and could be refined for bomb material. If it’s all reused in a breeder cycle, diverting some of it for bomb material is even more likely. I don’t see that it’s a non-issue.
Al Bundy wrote @283:
Well, apart from the over-complication of 3 or 4 energy sources, and IBM claiming they have a new world-beating battery built from seawater (specific chemistry not specified so not subject to detailed analysis), one hell of a lot of driving range could be provided from electric storage as heat in solar salt. You plug in, and heat from a tank of solar salt is tapped to generate juice to charge your battery. This is not at all difficult to do; we are retiring steam turbines that we could retain for on-demand generators, if we wished to do it.
I honestly WISH you would hate me, as long as you grasp the essential issues involved. The issues matter; I don’t.
HTF, man? The USA is sitting on 500 years of energy requirements as “depleted uranium” and recoverable uranium in used (but not expended) nuclear fuel. We literally do not need thorium for CENTURIES. Fast-neutron reactors can dispose of all of the “long-term waste” problem† even more thoroughly than thorium breeders can (you’ll have some small fraction of U-233 that does not fission through 5 neutron captures and becomes Pu-238, which you cannot fission effectively in a thermal neutron spectrum; fast neutrons fission all Np, Pu, Am and Cu isotopes with sufficiently high probability that you don’t have to worry about buildup).
The real attraction of thorium breeders is the low fissile inventory and consequent rapid doubling time. I recall calculating that a thorium breeder could double its fissile inventory in a couple of years. Have you noticed that none of the proponents of thorium, such as Thorcon, are even going for net breeding? It’s so obviously problematic (weapons proliferation) that nobody wants to touch that. So no, thorium is not the panacea you think it is. Uranium may be where it’s at.
† All transuranics are fast-spectrum fuel and should be consumed. Fission products are not fuel, and there are a few isotopes like Tc-99 and I-129 which hang around a very long time. They are the only true “long-term waste”. But they also have very low heat output, so you can put them in something like a salt dome a la WIPP, seal them up and forget about them. They won’t get out by themselves and sane people won’t go digging for them.
nigelj writes 286:
I don’t prefer it. It’s just the natural outcome of the logistics of district heating. If nature doesn’t give you any other options, you accept what you’re given and move on.
For the Thorium-fanboys (german text):
Trügerische Hoffnung: Neue Reaktorkonzepte im Check
https://www.oeko.de/aktuelles/2017/truegerische-hoffnung-neue-reaktorkonzepte-im-check/
Neue Reaktorkonzepte
Eine Analyse des aktuellen Forschungsstands
https://www.oeko.de/publikationen/p-details/neue-reaktorkonzepte/
124 pages Analsis of the technology
https://www.oeko.de/fileadmin/oekodoc/Neue-Reaktorkonzepte.pdf
Overview:
Thorium Reaktor – neue AKW – Flüssigsalzreaktor: Alte Lügen – Neu verpackt / Kleine, neue, “grüne Atomkraft” / Nuclear Pride Coalition & Klimawandel
http://www.bund-rvso.de/thorium-reaktor-fluessigsalz-klein.html
Thorium fuel has risks
Simple chemical pathways open up proliferation possibilities for the proposed
nuclear ‘wonder fuel’, warn Stephen F. Ashley and colleagues.
https://www.nature.com/articles/492031a
nigelj writes @287:
Two of the more interesting mining problems involve phosphate and rare earths. Uranium naturally precipitates with phosphate, and both uranium and thorium associate with rare earths in a host of deposits (by themselves or with coal). In the USA, EPA restrictions on “hazardous waste” make many rare earth ores economically difficult or impossible to refine due to their thorium content. There is so much uranium (and its decay daughters) in phosphate rock that some phosphate mines have been declared Superfund sites… with no realistic prospects for “cleanup”.
I’ve got a recipe for de-problematizing these problems:
1. Normalize NORM (Naturally Occuring Radioactive Material). Declare that exposure up to e.g. 10 mSv/yr is harmless and Below Regulatory Concern. Seriously, it IS harmless.
2. Define thorium as a regular heavy metal rather than radwaste. (Make Thorium Gas Lamp Mantles Great Again!)
90% carbon capture system for trucks, powered by exhaust heat:
https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/12/20191226-epfl.html
Killian: Your just as ingorant as he is.
AB: Making multiple elementary errors in a single short sentence while delivering an insult is stupid beyond belief.
But funny as Hell. Keep it up, doofus.
And Killian swallows the propaganda @275:
Let me go over that
articlehit piece and list what’s so wrong about it.1. Leads off with a picture of a heap of loose material in a tunnel, with no description in the caption. The implication is that it’s “nuclear waste” though it’s certainly loose soil makes it a pretty egregious falsehood… and that’s just what you see first.
2. There’s no “crisis” of fuel storage, anywhere. Dry-cask storage is perfectly workable and any fuel which won’t fit into the wet pools can go into dry casks.
3. There’s no risk of fire, venting of gases (which are harmless once diluted), environmental contamination (no source of energy to spread anything), the containers are good for a century and terrorists know better than to waste their efforts trying to break steel-reinforced concrete.
4. The whole thing is based on ideological fear-mongering by Greenpeace, one of the usual suspects. They have never told the truth about nuclear energy and are not about to start.
5. One questions what is “regenerative” about e.g. Germany clear-cutting old-growth forests for “biomass energy”. Nuclear is far more ecologically sound.
Commenters nigelj and zebra in particular might care to learn how a nominally “free market” for electrical power actually functions. Here is one way:
http://bravenewclimate.proboards.com/thread/714/pjm-style-electricity-markets
New to posting here at RC, and admittedly quite the initiate to energy and environment overall.
During a recent local book club discussion I put together some ideas on matters being discussed in the Forced Variations thread here and figured it wouldn’t hurt to get feedback on those ideas, if folks have an interest.
The thoughts can be read at threatvelocity.com. They’re quite brief and massively oversimplified of course, but curious if I’m even vaguely in the ball park so far as my thinking goes.
nigelj,
Yeah, the traditional pollution we’re spewing isn’t that big a deal for those who will follow us, but GHG pollution is way long-lived. That will seriously cramp our descendants’ style. Killian’s dream doesn’t work so well if we crank up the heat by 5C. (MRKIA might say, ‘5C? We’re NUMBER 1! 10C is doable!!!’)
Speaking of ‘C’s, ain’t it a hoot that Serious People are still talking 1.5 to 2C as if that were any more likely than giving every 10 year old girl her own pony?
The Indigenous Science of Permaculture
https://www.kcet.org/shows/tending-nature/the-indigenous-science-of-permaculture
Yes, Permaculture us deeply connected to TEK. You damned fools chasing poisonous energies and denying that what already exists can’t possibly, even when there is no other choice, need to listen more than you speak.
235 – BPL
“BPL: Mentira. Your side wants to cut down on immigration by brown people, period. That’s why it’s putting legitimate asylum seekers in concentration camps and separating their families.”
Indeed BPL – mentira – to lie is EXACTLY what you did there. Obama built those camps with chain-link cages and you know it. Nigelj and the rest of the peanut gallery says: “What? Obama did that?” Even leftist “Snopes” says yes, Obama did EXACTLY that:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-build-cages-immigrants/
Did you become indignant, and go around virtue-signaling and bashing Obama when he did that? I doubt it. No, Orange Man Bad.
Read and learn, you silly child:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/12/the_destructiveness_of_the_liberal_child_mind.html
Sadly, there are thousands of cases like this:
https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/ice-murder-of-teen-found-dumped-in-green-river-could-have-been-prevented/996175211/
240 – E-P
“The “communities” from which such people come should be removed from the Americas and sent home; if they hate the people here, this place is anything but “home” to them. They have to go back.”
100% agree. We have ~1400 years of history with one group that says you are correct. A 1400 year trend is a lot longer than 30 years needed to establish “climate”. ;)
AB, #283–
I don’t know about that. The entire Tesla line accelerates like the proverbial bats out of hell. Of course electric motors are incredibly torque-y, but secondarily that extra weight helps traction, I suppose.
Engineer-Poet:
There’s some grandiosity on display, right there. He thinks we’re dangerous? Boy, am I glad this guy isn’t in charge.
On just about everyone’s list of deadly sins, pride is the deadliest, for it enables all others. We’re all guilty, of course, and it’s merely pride to imagine yourself “saved”: fine for you, but what about the rest of us 8^(? Still, when we know it in ourselves, we can at least try to keep a lid on it. Failing that, l’enfer, c’est les autres!
#316, KIA–
Still on the off-topic immigration stuff, I see, and still either using sources misleadingly or failing to read for comprehension. Oh, and making totally unsupported assertions. Can’t forget that aspect.
Al Bundy @289,
No I don’t see it like that, and Im not sure you are all that smart or wise. Not on this day anyway:) Xmas hangover perhaps?
I know you were trying to get me to bite like a fish. Ok, it worked.
Firstly I’ve constantly acknowledged our environmental problems on this website, including both pollution, resource scacity and all the rest. How could you not see that? Therefore I certainly dont see the current situation as some jumping off point. That is much to simplistic. I agree to the extent if things dont change, we will leave a waste land of a future to some extent anyway. Reminds me of the TS Eliot Poem The Wasteland.
But its a question of “what things are going bad, and what things should we change and why?” You and others do far too much exaggeration, arm waving and generalising and crazy thinking. Toxic waste from mines is mostly a local problem yet you exaggerate it hugely. Stopping use of technology or radically reducing it to fix environmental pollution problems just isn’t an intelligent sort of response. Its a very blunt instrument.
Solutions have to work and make sense. For someone as solution focused as you you should know that. Regarding resource scarcity, conserving and rationing resources right now will change our lifestyles and only delays the inevitable point where future generations run out. It just buys them a bit more time at xyz level of consumption. So making massive changes isn’t compelling to me. Making some changes makes sense.
I also see little point in advocating grand utopian solutions and massive lifestyle changes and massive reductions in use of materials, because its so unlikely people will be prepared to do that. I advocate plausible solutions, not wishful thinking.
Of course I acknowledge there’s an environmental problem with pollution and resource scarcity. My solution is simple and has the merit that it has some chance of being implemented: Have stronger laws to stop pollution, accept the inevitability of zero gdp growth, waste less, be a little bit less materialistic, and get the size of population down (I acknowledge this is also Zebras big solution and his interesting ideas on it) and of course alternative energy for the climate problem. This is hard work, and not without problems of its own, but it’s feasible.
Of course my scheme is nothing new, its probably the mainstream approach and it doesn’t have a nice catchphrase like “simplification” and its not an environmental philosophy, and it doesn’t press for a utopian society along communal ownership lines. Its a muddle through approach, combining various things, not a headline grabber. But at least it is thought through, and it has a fighting chance of actually gaining traction.
What have you guys got? A lot of wishful thinking.
Mr KIA @316, I’m not a peanut. And at least Obama didn’t separate mothers and children and try to massively scale back immigration. It’s patently obvious Trump wants to stop all immigration if he can get away with it, and make America a white enclave preferably run by billionaire boomers.
But in the interest of being balanced, I do think the Democrats should be pushing an immigration platform that acknowledges the need for some regulation of immigration. They are tending to be a bit knee jerk in their reaction to things.
Guest, thanks for the link. Thorium doesn’t lead to plutonium and U 232 contamination makes the U 233 pathway to proliferation difficult, but not necessarily too difficult for a dedicated actor with serious coin, especially if your workers don’t mind dying of radiation sickness.
There’s a lot of thorium lying around. Neutron sources exist. Thorium power stations are not necessary, and with molten salt they’re probably a more difficult path to a bomb. E-P, what are your thoughts?
________
Kevin McKinney: I don’t know about that. The entire Tesla line accelerates like the proverbial bats out of hell. Of course electric motors are incredibly torque-y, but secondarily that extra weight helps traction, I suppose.
AB: Yep, acceleration should always be supplied solely by electric motors. This allows the engine(s) to be designed to operate in a narrow sweet spot. Engines have two uses. First, as range extenders. You need to go further than 10 miles while using surface streets? Crank up the smaller engine.
Next, you need to travel at significant speed for a significant distance? Once on the highway crank up the larger (but still tiny) cruising engine. The smaller engine will have pre-warmed the oil and the larger engine to an extent so the larger engine never starts “cold”. Thus, the only wear and tear to speak of is to a lawnmower-sized engine. It also means that emissions, which, like wear, are concentrated during initial warm-up, will plummet (the exhaust of the smaller engine’s exhaust treatment system feeds into the larger engine’s exhaust treatment system).
You need to go up a hill or pass another vehicle? You’ll be using the flywheel(s) to dump as much energy into the motor(s) as testosterone demands.
Heavier vehicles will accelerate slower, given the same electric motor(s). Of course, one can add in torque until you hit the real limiting factor: tires. When the weight of the vehicle is such that the tires have optimal flex you’ll have an advantage, but that’s “matching” as opposed to “heaviest vehicle wins”. And remember, batteries may be “able” to fast-charge and fast-discharge but both are highly inefficient and destructive to the most expensive wear item on a vehicle. Batteries and engines are both best used as near-constant power supplies. Note that this usage most likely will result in more efficient and cheaper battery chemistries and all those expensive and inefficient grid-stressors (fast charging stations) become unnecessary.
I’m reminded of a technique I saw at the one tractor pull I attended. A guy attached a pole and an anvil to the front of his tractor to create a torque-suppressor, for want of a better term. The other tractors had to worry about front end lift. He just floored it. Lots of “rolling coal” and one quick tractor!
____
E-P,
Cool find about trucks and CO2 liquification. Unfortunately, it appears to operate based on the assumption that an inefficient engine is used. This changes things…
Civilization itself is managed by damned fools!
Arguing over to be nuclear energy or not nuclear energy is a fools game.
Emotive hand waving about nuclear waste storage equally so. The solutions are already known, the technology already available. That world govts don’t pursue it is not a logical reason to declare they don’t exist or are not real and fit for purpose.
In our extremely pathological world, driven by ego/greed/narcissism and worse, so stupid and ignorant ‘it’ can’t even bring itself to ban/destroy all nuclear arms and war itself, what makes you think it’s going to be able to deploy safe nuclear energy rationally even though they already exist?
Let alone stop global warming increasing to eventually destroy most of ‘civilisation’ itself.
I’m reminded here of educated priests arguing about how many angels could fit on the end of a needle in the 4th century! But whatever floats your boat you’ll keep doing. Exceptions do exist, still the majority of humanity are pathological fools. On all sides of politics. The denial of this truth is far worse than agw/cc denialism, because it encompasses a denial by almost all people and not only a few.
Need some ‘proof’? Logically, were humanity not a collection of pathological fools proper rational effective solutions to stop global warming would already have been put in place. GHG atmospheric levels would already be stabilised and beginning to fall. Plus there would not be a new nuclear arms race unfolding before your eyes.
Al Bundy @313, my reference to pollution was just that, pollution in the traditional sense, like particulate emissions. CO2 emissions are a different thing, and yes I agree even more problematic for future generations.
We need solutions that work, not just the math’s as EP points out, but things that are acceptable to average people.Some form of alternative energy should be acceptable, massive cuts to levels of consumption would be less acceptable. Yes or no?
319 you’ve got that right KIA spreads hate and lies and wonders why he is not loved.
Al Bundy wrote @288:
Thank you. That is one of my explicit goals: to back up my claims with evidence, and to provide resources for people who want to learn more. Same story at my blog.
Knowledge is power
Power corrupts
Study hard
Be evil
-_^
And Killian reasons in a circle @299:
Your refusal to believe it doesn’t make it false. Calling someone a liar for it is slander.
Yucca Mountain is eminently implementable. It has not been implemented because people opposed to it had the power to block it.
France stores all its radioactive byproducts from reprocessing in a single building, under water. Finland is putting their spent fuel 1700 feet down in bedrock. We can reprocess spent fuel and divide it up into 4 streams: recovered uranium, transuranics, short-lived fission products (up to 30.1 years HL) and long-lived fission products (HL upwards of 100,000 years). The former 2 are fuel. We can bury the last two in specialized repositories, though the last doesn’t really need it and we could just dilute it in the oceans where it would only add minimal radioactivity compared to the huge amount of natural K-40.
What, didn’t you realize that the whole world was radioactive from its birth?
BPL writes @301:
All the lead, cadmium, arsenic and mercury in the world is toxic and will remain so until the Sun burns out.
Only the transuranics and two specific FP isotopes (Tc-99 and I-129) last “thousands of years”. Transuranics are fuel which should not be thrown away. Everything else decays to less than the activity of the parent ore in 500 years. There are wooden buildings in Europe older than 500 years and still in use.
Nope. Totally wrong isotope mix.
As Little Rocket Man found out when his first tries at plutonium bombs produced sub-kiloton fizzles, it is not as easy to make weapons-grade material as neophytes think. As soon as you get some Pu-239, it also starts absorbing neutrons and 35% of it becomes Pu-240. Pu-240 is such a headache that the one and only test of “reactor-grade” Pu in a bomb, made in a British MAGNOX reactor and only irradiated for a couple of months, was deemed a failure. Material that’s been in a high neutron flux for months or years won’t go “boom” for you; “pop” is the best you’ll get.
Tom Herrera writes @312:
You’re thinking way too small and haven’t figured out that Mark Z. Jacobson is a charlatain (he’s financed by money from oil baron Jay Precourt, how could he be anything else? read the takedown by Clack et al. to see just how much fakery is involved).
Want to make yourself useful? Dig up info on Hansen’s favorite remedy, enhanced weathering. Find out just where big deposits of ultramafic rocks are, then figure out how much is required to soak up 60-100 ppm of CO2, and how much energy it will take to mine and crush it to sizes which weather quickly. I doubt that we’re short of places to put it. Some have suggested spreading it on land with warm weather and rainfall, but using it to build up beaches which are going underwater due to sea-level rise and letting wave action wear off the CO2-saturated outer layers of granules is good too.
Kevin McKinney writes @317:
So did the lineal ancestor to all the Teslas, the tzero. It used off-the-shelf lead-acid batteries and had a pretty poor range, but it was quick. So were the White Zombie and Killacycle.
Power has not been an issue for electric vehicles since the nineteenth century; the problem has always been range (energy) and battery life. Energy matters much less for a hybrid. For a sensible vehicle, you need power and battery life. Lead-acid, while highly recyclable, has always been pretty poor for lifespan unless e.g. kept on float-charge all the time like standby phone system batteries. This isn’t compatible with driving on electric power. NiMH and Li-ion are far better for that.
Note that Tesla had to limit power output from its laptop-cell based batteries in order to maintain life. This suggests that other battery chemistries are superior for hybrids, which have much smaller batteries and require much higher power densities. But yeah, if you can get that power density you can do 0-60 in what used to be ridiculously low times without burning fuel. Ultracapacitors are rather pricey for the energy but have power density that makes batteries turn green with envy.
Al Bundy writes @322:
Plutonium may be the lesser threat. If you have a net thorium breeder MSR, you can isolate U-233 without the U-232.†
This is probably why NOBODY is trying to make a pure thorium MSR. Thorcon is going for 50% replacement of LEU with thorium, at most.
I fear that the cat is out of the bag regarding bombs, at least for state actors. It’s 70-yr-old technology. If Lil’ Rocket Man can do it, pretty much any decent-sized country can.
† The intermediate between Th-232 and U-233 is Pa-233. This has a huge neutron-capture cross section and a 27-day half-life, so neutron captures in it are a BIG problem (you get non-fissile U-234); you either have to run at VERY low neutron flux or pull the Pa-233 out of your reactor until it finishes decaying to uranium. The oxidation states of Pa-233 make it fairly simple to pull it out of a molten salt mixture into molten bismuth; when Pa-233 decays to uranium, it migrates right back. All you need to do is remove some of that bismuth and you get a stream of pretty pure U-233.
IIRC, pure U-233 has a spontaneous fission rate of roughly 0.6/kg/sec. You can make a gun-style bomb out of that, a la the “Little Boy”; you don’t need fancy implosion systems like plutonium. Thorium MSRs might actually be worse proliferation risks than uranium FBRs (imagine that!).
Al Bundy @322, I agree molten salt thorium looks attractive as its safer than current systems and smaller units can be built than water cooled systems. But I recall reading that Americas government has killed it dead because the materials can be turned into a bomb. This looks like a hard roadblock to dismantle.
Children, if you’re reduced to pointing out typos and word usage rather than germane content, you’re… children. While I play an editor and language instructor in real life, like the old saws about doctors being sick and mechanics having broken down cars, I don’t give the slightest damn about editing my on-line posts, so things sneak through – particularly typos. But, again, only those who are childish and petty make that the focus of their debates.
Greenpeace is not objective, but you dolts are? Save your ad homs for idiots who can’t tell that’s what you’ve done. The issues raised by that piece are legit, and you all know it. There is leakage all over the world. There are hundreds of accidents all over the world every year, etc.
The key issue for nuclear, however, is long-term effects. There are large areas of the planet that are now not habitable due to the use of nuclear. That’s all you need to know. Even so, it’s absolutely not needed to solve any of our problems – and has never solved the problem it was created for: Cheap energy for the masses.
It cannot, will not be scaled globally. It will, and already does, do massive damage. It’s useless to drill down to secondary, tertiary, and lower, issues when these points cannot be dismissed.
It’s poisonous over extremely long time frames, the waste cannot be managed, it’s not cheap, it’s not sustainable. There are zero reasons to discuss it.
So, idiots, stop discussing it. Why idiots? The world is dying and you’re discussing issues that are irrelevant. That’s idiotic.
Re 309 Al Duncy said AB: Making multiple elementary errors in a single short sentence while delivering an insult is stupid beyond belief.
But funny as Hell. Keep it up, doofus.
In fact, errors are in no way an indicator of intelligence, even when mistakes. The irony of you saying something that *is* stupid about something that is not…
Bunch of damned fools have made these boards useless… Shut up abput nuclear, shut up about denial, idjits.
Adam Lea @132 (on the UV Thread)
“Thirdly, there is the problem that significantly reducing ones carbon footprint requires taking sacrifices for little tangible benefit…. (you list some things you did like cycling, but mention that you gave up on some of them)”
I have made several lifestyle changes to reduce my carbon footprint, but I can’t get enthusiastic to do much more. I’ve bought a small fuel efficient car (by my standards), mostly use buses, rarely fly and I eat a low meat diet, and I’m actually pretty happy about this, but I would have done some of these things anyway regardless of the climate issue. Parking a small car is easier and I don’t love travel. There is no way I would go cold in winter, huddling under blankets or go cycling through our nightmare traffic. So I identify with your concerns.
“This is the fundamental problem as I see it, how do you get every individual to work together on reducing carbon footprint in a way that is acceptable to the population at large, because telling people they have to give up things they enjoy and/or enhance convenience is not going to work. If there is an answer to this I would love to hear it, if only to replace despair with hope and optimism.”
Exactly. However most people will probably make some changes, even if they see it as an inconvenience, because they want to be seen to be doing something, but it is at risk of being tokenism, and easy stuff like a few LED lightbulbs.
Things would change more robustly if people were either pushed or given incentives, or both. For example our government is changing the tax structure to favour electric cars which will make them far more attractive financially. Other countries do the same thing but with government subsidies. But you cant do this for every lifestyle issue, like free bicycles, because it would become a nightmare of complexity, and too onerous on governments finances. For this reason a carbon tax and dividend that captures everything in a simpler way has merit, and some flow through to promoting lifestyle changes.
None of this is new or riveting stuff, but I think its the sensible approach. The sticking point is political anti tax ideology and scaremongering. I don’t understand these freaks. You can make carbon tax legislation have an expiry date, and so it has to be voted back in periodically, so that it can’t just last forever and permanently make government bigger or whatever bogeyman scares people.
The other thing that I was thinking about is that if there was more movement to decarbonise electricity grids, people might feel more inclined to make personal efforts because they would feel their efforts are adding to other big efforts. But it could possibly go in the opposite direction if people feel the grid is being fixed then why should they do anything personally? Things aren’t ever simple.
But the electricity grid must be modernised to alternative energy, period, full stop. If we don’t do that, I think we are (insert appropriate swear word of your choice).
There is scaring the hell out of each other about the climate issue, and thats ok to a point, but you have to be careful not to do it constantly, exaggerate and get hysterical, because this can have the reverse effect and can get quite depressing. And there is ethical and moral pleading with people. Of course we see plenty of all of this happening. It’s hard to say how effective it is and some people dont like it, but perhaps it all adds together. Remaining silent about the issues doesn’t look like a great idea to me. When has that ever lead to change?
David B. Benson @311
“Commenters nigelj and zebra in particular might care to learn how a nominally “free market” for electrical power actually functions. Here is one way:”
Thanks, looks like good value. And here is our way:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_electricity_market
David B. Benson @311
“Commenters nigelj and zebra in particular might care to learn how a nominally “free market” for electrical power actually functions. Here is one way:”
Thanks. And here is our way:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_electricity_market
Kevin,
Yes, EVs are getting cheaper, but they aren’t at lifecycle parity. Your link has several errors.
They didn’t use Tesla’s rate, about $0.30US/kwh, which is about quadruple their $0.087CAD/kwh. A blended number would have shown a lack of partisanship. And note that that $0.30 is measured at the plug. Losses within the vehicle are ignored. You ain’t getting a KWH when the plug says it supplied a KWH (I’m guessing that Tesla measures in the way that makes them look the best). Fast charging is all about baking batteries.
They assumed that when the EV’s battery dies (10 or so years) the cars will be toast. When is the last time you saw an ICE vehicle die in 10 years unless it got totaled in an accident? Vehicles last 20+ years. My 2012 is still “new”.
They didn’t add in the extra miles EVs must travel to find chargers. They also discounted the driver’s wasted time to zero. Heck, even charging at home every day is more of a pain than occasionally filling up. Dragging and storing cables is not fun, especially when you need to drag them out a door and out to the street. No garage? You bought a PITA, son.
They didn’t make the tax adjustment required. If all vehicles are EVs then all road taxes must come from EVs. Thus, the seriously high taxes levied on petrol must be “virtually levied” on EVs, unless you’re partisan.
They didn’t use the best petrol-only vehicle, the Hyundai Ionic non-plug-in hybrid but a crappy Civic that gets half the MPG. Why?? Partisanship is the only answer.
They didn’t add in the extra cost in tires. EVs are heavy. This is also a pollution problem. Tires “wear” by shedding microplastics. Not fun to breathe and God knows what the environmental consequences are. This might be offset with oil changes and air filters (don’t remember how they handled those).
And as my description of a quadbrid vehicle shows, EVs provide ZERO increase in performance and are surely going to fall further behind in cost of ownership.
And note that a quadbrid vehicle does not suffer from reduced efficiency in winter since the engine box is insulated and the engines are right-sized. There ain’t hundreds of pounds of metal doing diddly and all that precious heat is conserved, as opposed to dumped as fast as possible via a huge energy drain (a radiator). In fact, a quadbrid vehicle gets better MPG in the winter since engine efficiency is influenced by the relative distance from absolute zero between the hot side (2500F) and cold side (atmospheric) of the engine.
And since coal is worse than oil and natural gas leaks, especially when fracked, there isn’t a GHG rationale for EVs. They currently suck just as bad as ICEs currently suck, climatewise. Well, at least in shithole countries like the USA. Norway is another matter… (ain’t misparaphrasing Donald Drumpf fun?)
Al Bundy, regarding my rant @320, that was probably a bit rough and wandered away from your point, but I just wanted to describe how I see things, and didnt have time to edit it. Dont take it as a criticism of your world view.
E-P 310: There’s no risk of fire
BPL: Brown’s Ferry. $100 million in damage, and that was in the ’70s.
KIA 316: Obama built those camps
BPL: But he didn’t put legitimate asylym seekers in them, nor separate children from their families. Stop lying.
#318 Mal Adapted,
Grandiosity? More like drunk, and definitely not with power. (heh…power, get it?)
Anyway, my main concern is that the physics/engineering stuff is not mis-represented; he seems to be used to spouting incoherent and incorrect stuff without being challenged by people who know better. We get upset when the Denialists do it on climate, and to me this is pretty much the same.
Even people without the background should be able to spot the obvious:
He says that “volt-amps is not power”, even though he has used the term “reactive power” god-knows how many times in previous comments.
He makes the absurd statement that a capacitor does not store energy, and then says “whatever trivial amount of energy it stores”.
Kinda weird, for someone claiming expertise, don’t you think?
I don’t know his actual background, but he sounds very much like someone who got a job in the utility sector about 50 years ago and hasn’t needed to go beyond plugging numbers into equations by rote. And who is a memorizer, of course, who thinks that recitation is the same as explanation… like the people who memorize Korans and Bibles and such.
The reality is that there is no “physics” that causes blackouts because of using wind or solar. What’s happening is that all over the world, there are smart young people figuring out how to implement and bring to realization a new paradigm for this stuff… electricity, transportation, whatever.
And we have, of course, the Authoritarian types who can’t accept being replaced, offering up their narrow and non-transferable expertise on making buggy-whips.
nigelj: What have you guys got? A lot of wishful thinking.
AB: Wow. Never thought I’d see you channeling E-P. We’re a diverse lot with many and varied ideas. And yes, much/most of it boils down to “If only…”. Of course, you are included in “us guys”…
As is generally true with our communications, I wasn’t refuting you but adding to. And yeah, I don’t even have to go back a page to find the comment you’re commenting about to believe that it contained a little ribbing at your expense. That’s what friends are for, eh Mr Fish?
Note that I clarified (realified? walked back?) my environmental destruction comment, saying that traditional pollution pales in comparison to the “newfangled” GHG pollution. Going further, I generally disagree with cleaning up Superfund sites. Fence them off and let nature have some space (like the Chernobyl exclusion zone), with the caveat that groundwater can be an issue. Of course, groundwater issues will probably drop way down humanity’s list of concerns when ecosystems start collapsing. Or, perhaps more accurately, when ecosystem collapse gets too advanced to ignore.
As an aside, I don’t drink to the point of poisoning. I limit myself to very dilute dark red wine. So no post holiday hangovers for me. :-)
E-P: What, didn’t you realize that the whole world was radioactive from its birth?
AB: Good thing, too. Radioactivity drives the Earth’s magnetic field and volcanoes/plate tectonics, both of which are absolutely required for us to survive.
Even more importantly, without radioactivity we couldn’t have helium balloons. What’s the point of a balloon if if doesn’t float? So we’d be giving our kids hydrogen balloons. Imagine the chaos…
Killian: In fact, errors are in no way an indicator of intelligence, even when mistakes. The irony of you saying something that *is* stupid about something that is not…
AB: OK, I’ll translate “stupid” for you: Drunk as a Skunk.
E-P,
I’ve read that capacitors require a resistor and so are limited to below 50% efficiency. Ultracapacitors would make a grand replacement for a quadbrid’s flywheel if this limit isn’t real. (The storage needed is whatever will get the vehicle up to top speed. 0-90 and 90-0 without messing with the battery or brakes)
What’s the real deal?
nigelj @336 — Thank you for the link.
Killian made me laugh out loud @333:
You are the poster child for “everything you know is wrong”. Almost the entire Fukushima evacuation zone has already been cleared for re-habitation by the severely radio-phobic Japanese government. Look up “Chernobyl babushkas” and “Chernobyl horses” to see just how “not habitable” that bit of stupidity left the zone. The wildlife is doing beautifully, given that there are so few humans to bother them now.
But don’t look at France, which went nuclear in the 80’s to get away from costly oil and is enjoying cheap energy for the masses going on 40 years later. It’s the fact that slays your theory.
Uranium is ubiquitous. A ton of granite contains more energy as actinides than a ton of coal. The oceans contain something like 4 billion tons of it, and rivers dump a further 32,000 tons of uranium into them every year; the Colorado river alone carries 60 tons of uranium through the Grand Canyon every year.
Running all the economies of the world on uranium would require perhaps 6-10,000 of those 32,000 tons.
Everything you’ve written so far has been totally false. Why do you do this? Are you a paid agent of fossil fuel companies (which is what Greenpeace is, as that’s where lots of their money comes from)?
500 years tops, compared to atmospheric CO2 which will hang around for thousands of years… unless we find the emissions-free energy to do something about it.
Looks like desperation talking. “OMG, the climate community might actually unite around a REAL SOLUTION (that doesn’t involve us taking control of all the wealth of the west)! SHUT IT DOWN!”
Greenpeace claims that a bit of radiation will end life on earth, but evidence shows that rats BENEFIT from low-level radiation exposure, living at least 25% longer than controls. Scientists for Accurate Radiation Information is a group demanding that evidence-based standards replace our current paranoia-based ones. This will benefit people in a host of ways, including better medical treatment from faster, better and cheaper imaging. Plus, of course, lots of clean energy.
And you want it all stopped.
nigelj wrote @335:
On the contrary, if the grid is carbon-free it suddenly becomes much easier to take personal action: whenever you replace a carbon-emitting thing, buy an electric one. When your car wears out, buy a plug-in hybrid or EV. Electric dryer and range replace gas. Heat pump replaces furnace. Suddenly these things are huge helps and even total solutions.
What’s nigh-impossible to do with a grid that’s even 20% fossil-powered is easy with 100% emission-free.
Al Bundy writes @338:
You don’t need to use a Tesla-owned charger unless you’re going a relatively long way. Almost all of your charging will be done at home. Plugging in a cable takes a lot less time than regular runs to gas stations.
There are LOTS of free chargers out there, both public and private. Counting on my mental fingers, I know of 16 Tesla and 8 J1772 chargers within 20 miles of me. All but one is free. Plus, with a “convenience cord”, any NEMA outlet becomes a charger.
I have driven a PHEV for 6.5 years now. I don’t drag cables out doors; I keep one end plugged into a 3-prong NEMA socket in my garage, and the other end plugs into my car. I bought a kit for a wall-mounted charger which would charge more than twice as fast, but there is so little inconvenience involved with my current arrangement that I haven’t been motivated to put it together.
For those who really hate cords, there are inductive chargers that you just park on top of and they do their thing. I think this is for people much lazier than I am.