The Gaming Den

Probably. I am a terrible debater, so lets just remove any talking from myself for the debate. I'll just outsource my opinion to this guy:

http://www.withouthotair.com/download.html

He walks through all the energy scenarios (for the UK, admittedly, but its still very relevant and insightful) and concludes that the best solution is a mix of sources.


He then outlines several scenarios for Britian

A 30-fold increase in wind power over the 2007 installed power. Britain would have nearly three times as much wind hardware as Germany has now … wave power requires 7500 Pelamis deep-sea wave devices occupying 500 km of Atlantic coastline … tide power comes from 5GW of tidal stream installations, a 2GW Severn barrage, and 2.5GW of tidal lagoons, which can serve as pumped storage systems too …

Nuclear power (40GW) is a roughly four-fold increase of the 2007 nuclear fleet … clean coal (40GW) corresponds to taking the current fleet of coal stations, which deliver about 30GW, retrofitting carbon capture systems to them, which would reduce their output to 22GW, then building another 18GW of new clean coal stations. This level of coal power requires an energy input of about 53 kWh/d/p of coal, which is a little bigger than our current rate of burning of fossil fuels, and well above the level we estimated as being ‘sustainable’.

This rate of consumption of coal is roughly three times the current rate of coal imports … the UK would not be self-sufficient for coal [even if all our own mines re-opened].

Then the no more nuclear, and the plan that doesn;t evote 10% of the UK to windmills

First, we turn down all the renewable knobs … (Don’t misunderstand! Wind is still hugely increased over its 2007 levels – by a factor of 7.5, to be precise) …

25GW of nuclear power could, I think, be squeezed onto the existing nuclear sites. I left the clean coal contribution unchanged.

This plan requires the creation of five blobs each the size of London (44 km in diameter) in the [North African] desert, filled with solar power stations. It also requires power transmission systems to get the power up to the UK, and storage systems to store energy from the fluctuating sun. Once we’ve decided to import solar power from other countries, there’s little point having solar PV on our roofs at home – the same panels could always generate more in a sunnier country.

This plan gets … 72 per cent of the UK’s electricity [thus, most of its power] from other countries.

Then the no nukes no coal plan

Nudging up the wave contribution … and bumping up wind power by a whopping 24 to 32 kWh per day per person … wind delivers 64 per cent of all the electricity.

Under this plan, world wind power in 2007 is multiplied by four, with all of the increase being placed on or around the British Isles. Roughly one hundred of Britain’s major lakes and lochs would be required for the associated pumped storage systems.

This plan gets 14% of its electricity from other countries.

The immense dependence of plan G on renewables, especially wind, creates difficulties for our main method of balancing supply and demand, namely adjusting the charging rate of millions of rechargeable batteries for transport. So in plan G we have to include substantial additional pumped storage facilities, capable of balancing out the fluctuations in wind on a timescale of days … Most major lochs in Scotland would be part of pumped storage systems.

then the nuclear plan

E stands for ‘economics’. On a level economic playing field with a strong price signal preventing the emission of CO2, we don’t get a diverse solution, we get an economically optimal solution that delivers the required power at the lowest cost. And when ‘clean coal’ and nuclear go head to head on price, it’s nuclear that wins. (The capital cost of regular dirty coal power stations is £1 billion per GW, about the same as nuclear; but the capital cost of clean coal power, including carbon capture and storage, is roughly £2 billion per GW.) Offshore wind also loses to nuclear, but I’ve assumed that onshore wind costs about the same. My final plan is a rough guess for what would happen in a liberated energy market with a strong carbon price.

This plan has a ten-fold increase in our nuclear power over 2007 levels. 110GW is roughly double France’s nuclear fleet. I included a little tide because I believe a well-designed tidal lagoon facility can compete with nuclear power. In this plan, Britain has no energy imports except for the uranium…

I actually omitted a couple more variant scenarios, and the biofuel scenario which is jut bloody stupid (and I think we all agree)

You're welcome to read the document and raw your own conclusions.

Obviously I subscribe to the economics solution

You don't.

The author of the report actually prefers the outsource solar production to Libya plan, and subsidization of that. He dislikes nuclear intensely, as I suspect you and Crissa do and/or shares Frank's views on it.

He doesn't like the wind centric plan.

So anyway, thats the scenarios. Obviously for Australia or California, we can outsource our power production to ourselves in the heavy solar situation, which is better, but hey!

Which Scenario do you prefer?

Obviously I subscribe to the economics solution

What the hell do you mean? We could take every ounce of profit, every kilojoule of energy the nuclear industry has ever created and it wouldn't be enough to permanently and safely dispose of its waste.

Krissa, myself, Frank, we point that kind of thing out, we point out that actually all those bullshit super nuclear technologies are 60 year old con jobs, we point out your economic models are fundamentally flawed by exluding vast expenses from the economy and we point out your master plan will last maybe 50 years on average before collapsing entirely.

Any you declare that WE aren't subscribing to economical solutions?

No, I'm using that label because that is the label used by the author.

E stands for ‘economics’

I was merely trying to make it clear which scenario I was referring too by using the same language.

And please, consult the paper. The author has considered all the factors - he's opposed to the nuclear solution too btw - and says nuclear is only suitable as a stopgap solution. He goes on to cites that reserves would last everyone (population 6 billion) living at European living standards for a century. (European is cheaper than American). Longer too, assuming that it isn't an instantaneous overnight transferral.

But again, he is against that solution. In interviews he has stated that he (like Crissa) prefers the outsourced solar plan.

He also strongly advocates improvements in energy efficient living in all scenarios studied - like insulation and compact fluorescent light bulbs to drive down energy consumption too - and includes them in his analysis.

As a purely personal note, I agree with those energy efficiency improvements, and have partly implemented them - insulation in roof and walls and compact fluorescent light bulbs.

But anyway, I was merely curious which scenario you preferred to have implemented - all the trade offs, cost estimates and space requirements are clearly outlined. It is all quite accessible.

Well.. one of the solutions (the domestic only, no external energy, domestic wind, solar and hydro only solution) isn't costed - the Plan G one. He states why in the report. The scale of the hydro engineering proposed was to difficult to accurately estimate.

So how do you see our carbon free future evolving? You've obviously strongly opposed to plan E, so which of the other plans do you support?

Heck, just consult the 4 page executive summary here:

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sust ... nopsis.pdf

Skip to page 4, check out the 5 scenarios and tell me which one you want!

All plans assume energy efficiencies, all plans assume the stuff frank talked about, smart cars/batteries linked to the grid who can charge when electricity is cheap due to high supply.

I'm keen to understand you, frank and Crissa's take. What do you want to do? How do we proceed?

I think you quoting studies from nuclear powers is kinda, I dunno, sketchy. But I pointed that out already.

-Crissa

Okay, only a couple of nations in the EU are nuclear powers, but I guess you can think the organization is tainted as a result or something.

But lets move on from that now. You know what I think, but lets talk about what you think.

You've got a study done by a completely independent (and anti nuclear!) academic that outlines possible scenarios for a carbon free future for the UK, Europe and the World

Out of the scenarios he outlines that I linked above, what do you want us to do?

...And you're pointing to a UK study.

Which would be a nuclear power.

-Crissa

Ah, so anything that contradicts any of your knee-jerk reactions is wrong, and you will pull any reason out of your ass to deny it.

Typical.

Obviously nuclear power will look cheaper inside a Nuclear Power. They have the technology, and existing power gird, a top-down organization.

But the study didn't include pricing for tidal hydroelectric, even. That's silly, if they're supposedly a study we're going to trust. You could brown-paper it with the cost of flood abatement systems and figure the power output by the tidal height across the target bays.

Nuclear is a stop gap solution, great for powering cities and densely populated areas. But it's leaving out a grid that hasn't been updated in some places since AC power was first introduced. And there's too much scare tactics in dealing with fuel and waste that we'll simply have more of it just sitting around doing nothing.

And like drilling for oil, with a profit-motive, there's little regard for safety or the environment, since those are costs to be avoided for profit. And I say this as someone who's loved clean nuclear power since I read about the math behind it, and wrote a presentation based on a huge study published in The Oregonian about nuclear waste and how little we were dealing with it. Ten years later, the last commercial nuclear plant was shut down in Oregon and Washington by popular decree. Waste from hundreds of reactors and experiments still poison thousands of acres in the Northwest, even with clean up efforts to collect it.

-Crissa

Count_Arioch_the_28th wrote:Ah, so anything that contradicts any of your knee-jerk reactions is wrong, and you will pull any reason out of your ass to deny it.

Typical.

Count, there are several simple facts that are utterly unanswerable hurdles to nuclear power being a remotely smart or good option for humanity.

None of those are reflected in current market prices.

We can sit down all day and quote study after study saying how at current market prices it is cheap to buy nuclear power. But those don't remotely adequately account for the real costs and damage it causes.

The simple bald denial that nuclear waste is a significant and massive, even leviathan cost is outright dishonesty.

The simple bald denial that uranium is a rare and limited resource that will soon run out is outright dishonesty.

And so on.

If I had enough money then at the current prices I could "cheaply" fill fleets of blimps with Helium until the world, quickly, runs out of the rare and scientifically important gas. That doesn't mean doing so is the best thing for society compared to using hydrogen.

The rarity and the value of reserves to scientific progress is simply not part of the price.

Face it. The so called "free market" sucks at setting real and useful prices.

So what do you want to do instead?

angelfromanotherpin wrote: Look, there's a lot of shit that's impossible to predict. Nobody really knows anything about macroeconomics. But when you have to make a decision with a lot of unknowns, you make the decision based on what you do know. And we know that oil is a limited-supply directly-polluting resource, and that coal is a limited-supply directly-polluting resource, and that nuclear is a limited-supply directly-polluting resource. And that solar is neither limited-supply nor directly-polluting. If the cost to use it is only +100%, we should fucking grab it with both hands.

From a strictly utilitarian and logical point of view, that's probably right. But the problem is that the Earth isn't a hive mind, and if you increase the cost to produce power, then you increase the cost of power. And if you increase the cost of electricity, you basically increase the cost of everything.

Because everything you might imagine runs on electrical power. Computers, street lights, refrigeration, manufacturing machinery, and so on. Every single product you're looking at right now required the use of electricity sometime in its creation, transport or storage.

Now, if a country has extremely expensive electricity, by switching to all solar for instance, it has trouble keeping up with its competitors. Because you know that every country isn't going to agree to this energy plan if they think they can get an economic advantage by it.

This makes implementation of solar damn hard, because if a country does start switching to all solar, and thus more expensive power, it's likely going to hit a recession just doing so.

Actually that is somewhat a misinterpretation of economic theory and practice.

The real physical costs of nuclear power and coal exist no matter how much we go into denial with our market price.

Ultimately those costs apply to society anyway, it just happens in a different, and much less pleasant, way.

And as to investing in solar power causing recession. Well, no actually.

I'm led to believe it is like investing in infrastructure and technology. Because, well, it is actually exactly that.

So potentially it brings you OUT of recession.

Yeah, the problem is you have to be careful about your competitive advantage - if you move to a higher cost base, you'll be in trouble vs countries that preserve lower cost structures.

That said, its a pretty stupid argument in this context, because if someone elects to go for the lowest coast structure: Brown Coal, we all know we're going to have to embargo them or something.

But there are gaps between the no carbon technologies. PL, am I to presume you're in favour of the energy efficencies + some massive pumped water storage scheme + solar solution?

Crissa wrote: But the study didn't include pricing for tidal hydroelectric, even. That's silly, if they're supposedly a study we're going to trust. You could brown-paper it with the cost of flood abatement systems and figure the power output by the tidal height across the target bays.

He considers multiple approaches in the tidal section and includes pricing on page 216. He even walks through all the mechanis and describes how they are extremely useful for the high renewables scenarios because they can function as storage facilities.

cthulhu wrote:PL, am I to presume you're in favour of the energy efficencies + some massive pumped water storage scheme + solar solution?

Am I to presume that you are trying to pull the "Yeah well you think of something better then!" argument when presented with the massive inferiority of your declared preferred solution?

Yeah, because as I stated the main reason I think nuclear power is the best solution is the inadequateness of the other solutions.

So I'm totally curious what you think the other solutions are - because as you say, while you've point out that my solution has problems, what is it massively inferior too.

cthulhu wrote:what is it massively inferior too

Er... everything?

No really. It is that amazingly bad.

Switching to bicycles and horses is a smarter move.

...

Okay.

When I said every bit of energy and profit the nuclear industry has created isn't enough to safely and permanently dispose of its waste I meant it.

Because as our knowledge after more than half a century on the problem stands we only know, well, imagine, one (remotely) safe way of disposing of it, which is to launch it into the sun. And that requires utterly massive investments of money, energy, and... FOSSIL FUELS. And I mean MASSIVE we have fuel waste, reactors, mine sites, and mountains of dust and dirt it is big and it is fucking heavy.

And anyway after all this, what exactly about large volumes and areas of eternal, undisposable, uncontainable fatal poison do you NOT seem to understand?

We can't even begin to calculate that kind of cost let alone PAY for it. Even sitting in the dark is by far a smarter solution to delaying fifty years just so we can sit GLOWING in the dark and dying of fucking cancer.

We obviously disagree about the difficulties of disposal. Assuming you are doing french style vitrification and reprocessing the quantities of high level waste are actually fairly low - and its high level waste we are complaining about here. The Swedish seem happy with their plan, the Canadians are considering a similar plan, essentially drill big holes to store special canisters in special containers in special clays in low value high stability geographic formations.

Or if push comes to shove you could shake and bake it with uranium mine tailings and then put it all back in the mine, which would get the radioactivity down to ore levels. It was there to begin with, so it won't make the situation 'net worse'

Incidentally space seems like a pretty stupid plan. For starters rockets tend to explode on the launch pad and that is a pretty bad outcome.

But okay that is great, you think we should not do nuclear, or cut down to the 2-3 reactors designed for production of nuclear medicines. That is a 100% valid opinion.

I wrote a bit about all plans being flawed and its a matter of picking the 'least flawed' but its not really worth it.

cthulhu wrote:We obviously disagree about the difficulties of disposal. Assuming you are doing french style vitrification and reprocessing the quantities of high level waste are actually fairly low - and its high level waste we are complaining about here. The Swedish seem happy with their plan, the Canadians are considering a similar plan, essentially drill big holes to store special canisters in special containers in special clays in low value high stability geographic formations.

Uh... yeah.

CBC News wrote:In a report handed to the federal government in November 2005, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) recommended spent fuel rods be buried for a million years.

Right. The problem with this plan is that we've never built anything that has lasted a million years. The oldest structures we have are 10-20 thousand years old and they weren't stuffed full of nuclear waste. Also, they are totally no longer water tight. Many of them are even under water.

There is no reason to believe that we will achieve the ability to safely store anything for a million years. It is asking for our structures to last on the order of two orders of magnitude longer than anything we have ever built has proven itself capable of lasting, and to do it while it is filled with materials that literally alchemize adjacent structural materials into other materials that are not as structurally sound.

There's a reason that when pressed on this very subject, the head of the Liberal party said:

Stéphane Dion wrote:As long as I'm not able to look Canadians in the eyes and say I'm comfortable with the waste, I will not recommend it

That's where we stand. It's where we've stood from the very beginning of our nuclear power experiments and there's no particular reason to believe we'll stop standing in this exact same spot for th indefinite future.

Cthulhu wrote:Incidentally space seems like a pretty stupid plan. For starters rockets tend to explode on the launch pad and that is a pretty bad outcome.

Sure. Which is why I said at the start of this discussion that unless and until we develop some kind of magical mass driver to literally fire the nuclear waste into the sun, there is no such thing as a safe storage site.

But okay that is great, you think we should not do nuclear, or cut down to the 2-3 reactors designed for production of nuclear medicines. That is a 100% valid opinion.

Now that's a different question altogether. Yes, there's a place for nuclear power. There's a place on submarines and there's a place in the manufacture of isotopes needed for PET scans. And these are important. And we're going to do them.

But nuclear power is not a solution for our industrial or domestic power needs. It can't be. For a number of reasons. The complete lack of a safe waste disposal method is merely the clincher.

-Username17

don't we swtill need to come up with a waste storage solution anyway because both submarines and nuclear medicine create high level waste?

cthulhu wrote:don't we swtill need to come up with a waste storage solution anyway because both submarines and nuclear medicine create high level waste?

Yes and no. Right now we have no storage solution. We just take various areas and set them on nuclear fire and leave them like that forever. And that's bad. It's a shame, and we should do things to limit the extent of the areas we do that to.

But we aren't setting those lands on fire because it is less polluting than to put gas into the sky or whatever. We are setting those lands on fire because we genuinely don't have a replacement for generating positrons or powering ships underwater for months at a time.

And yeah, we should be more environmentally friendly about the reactors we run - but the best way to do that is to stop pretending that we can or should generate large amounts of power for the future by that method in any way that won't set the future on fire.

-Username17

cthulhu wrote:Incidentally space seems like a pretty stupid plan. For starters rockets tend to explode on the launch pad and that is a pretty bad outcome.

Whose rockets tend to explode?

...It's a dumb idea for waste because we're talking tons, and rockets expend tons for fuel for pounds of cargo.

But your argument is why people protest satellites and probes with advanced batteries and clocks.

-Crissa