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Coolguye posted:Yes, this includes all mining grounds and support infrastructure. Renewables still require two orders of magnitude more land. One of the primary benefits to both nuclear and fossil fuels is power density. One strip mine in South Dakota or one disassembled coal mountain in Appalachia can easily generate enough coal to power the entire United States for over a decade. The reason we don't do that is because it costs more than gas, which is even less land hungry. To do this same thing with a solar/wind/hydro mix we would need to devote more land to power generation than we currently do to farming. Entire forests have not been felled and entire habitats are still there because we use fossil fuels and not renewables to keep our lights on. Climate change is a serious problem, but let's not pretend like renewables are universally green. They're not. This paper comments on the land usage and has a nifty little diagram comparing nuclear, gas, coal, wind, solar and biomass https://wilderness.org/sites/default/files/legacy/Website-Land%20Use%20and%20Renewable%20Energy%20Generation.pdf
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Apr 26, 2017 15:22
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brugroffil posted:This paper comments on the land usage and has a nifty little diagram comparing nuclear, gas, coal, wind, solar and biomass Yeah this doesn't look too bad for the renewables. Offshore wind has basically zero meaningful footprint, too.
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Apr 26, 2017 15:51
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short term, nuclear is like the only way we can possibly avoid massive catastrophes related to climate change long term, renewables are better, but they aren't there yet it does not matter because the misinformed are terrified of nuclear, and most people are misinformed about most things (see also: fear of gmos, fear of vaccines, president trump happening) we are gonna piss our planet down our legs because three reactors out of the tens of thousands around the world melted down
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Apr 26, 2017 16:47
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I like nuclear from a technical standpoint, but economically it sucks balls and "short term" is like 15 years and about $10B from "hey lets build a plant" to generating power.
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Apr 26, 2017 17:00
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brugroffil posted:I like nuclear from a technical standpoint, but economically it sucks balls and "short term" is like 15 years and about $10B from "hey lets build a plant" to generating power. If only there were things we could do collectively as a society to change any of that.
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Apr 26, 2017 17:03
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Nevvy Z posted:If only there were things we could do collectively as a society to change any of that. Short of deregulation (gutting safety and security at nukes is a bad idea), probably not. Westinghouse thought they had it figured out with their "standard plant" design but now they're bankrupt. Unless there's a massive tax on carbon emissions from NG plants, nuclear just isn't economically feasible. That's why a lot of the older, smaller plants are shutting down as their licenses expire rather than filing for renewals.
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Apr 26, 2017 17:10
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brugroffil posted:I like nuclear from a technical standpoint, but economically it sucks balls and "short term" is like 15 years and about $10B from "hey lets build a plant" to generating power. the reprecussions of climate change are gonna suck a whole lot more balls economically than replacing our fossil fuel plants with nuclear reactors would
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Apr 26, 2017 17:13
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like the aim has been keeping temps to a max 2c rise in global average temperatures. the negative effects of even keeping to that ceiling would be huge, and we are in no way on track to keep the global temperature rise to just 2c right now. nuclear could potentially save us from total catastrophe, and gently caress if idiots are so afraid of meltdowns, just build pebble bed reactors instead, they can't melt down.
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Apr 26, 2017 17:17
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nuclear power had its window of opportunity and it's closed, it's not gonna happen again I also guarantee that a plant will melt down in China in spectacular fashion at some point
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Apr 26, 2017 17:19
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hey guys I don't disagree I am a fan of nuclear but I'm just saying economically they're not going to be build because they're a lot more expensive than natural gas! I think that holds true even if you put a decent carbon tax on natural gas.
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Apr 26, 2017 17:20
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LinYutang posted:nuclear power had its window of opportunity and it's closed, it's not gonna happen again i mean, you are not wrong but it still sucks. even meltdown-proof pebble bed reactors won't catch on cause people will just hear the word 'nuclear' and freak out. kinda like how virtually everyone i've ever heard who is anti-nuclear thinks reactors can explode in a hiroshima-sized blast.
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Apr 26, 2017 17:26
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shovelbum posted:Yeah this doesn't look too bad for the renewables. financially racist posted:i mean, you are not wrong but it still sucks. even meltdown-proof pebble bed reactors won't catch on cause people will just hear the word 'nuclear' and freak out. i've heard a lot of proponents of nuclear say that we really need to come up with a new word with regard to the pebble beds because they're as different in terms of both construction and output to a traditional fission plant as a model t is from a lambo. instead of proposing a 'pebble bed nuclear power station' or whatever you call it a thermal reactor or something to emphasize that it's doing much more work by virtue of its temperature vs its neutron activity. makes sense to me, anyone's guess how well that marketing would take though
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Apr 26, 2017 17:39
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Coolguye posted:those land usage statistics are staggering, i'm not sure what you're looking at there. you couldn't just drop solar cells over a few national parks and call it a day due to the power storage problem, you're going to need the biofuel and wind portions in there too. we already tried the biofuel portion with biodiesel and it caused widespread misery due to rising food prices. come on, now you're just being dumb. "drop solar cells over a few national parks." California's managed to figure out how to deploy a fuckload of solar without dropping it on Yosemite or King's Canyon. Much of Nevada and Utah are uninhabited wastelands. Wind has a high land use ratio, but I'm not sure how much those figures consider the mixed usage where you've got turbines plopped down in the middle of farms maybe taking up an acre each out of thousands of acres. quote:i've heard a lot of proponents of nuclear say that we really need to come up with a new word with regard to the pebble beds because they're as different in terms of both construction and output to a traditional fission plant as a model t is from a lambo. instead of proposing a 'pebble bed nuclear power station' or whatever you call it a thermal reactor or something to emphasize that it's doing much more work by virtue of its temperature vs its neutron activity. pebble bed and other Gen 4 reactors are cool, but they're all still a ways away from being able to be scaled up to full-size reactors.
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Apr 26, 2017 17:47
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i mean the real way for solar to work is to decentralize our power grid and throw solar panels on every loving roof in the country but lol not gonna happen and we are gonna keep relying on fossil fuels for decades even though we have the potential to switch away from them right the gently caress now
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Apr 26, 2017 17:50
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financially racist posted:short term, nuclear is like the only way we can possibly avoid massive catastrophes related to climate change Someone said this above but there literally is no 'short term' for nuclear power in the US. Some benevolent dictator could take control tomorrow and decree that we are going to build 300GW of nuclear capacity and it wouldn't begin to make an impact until like maybe 2030.
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Apr 26, 2017 17:55
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financially racist posted:i mean the real way for solar to work is to decentralize our power grid and throw solar panels on every loving roof in the country That could really help for residential and to some extent commercial, but it wouldn't be too helpful for industrial.
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Apr 26, 2017 17:53
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Turns out opposing nuclear power at every opportunity wasn't really good environmental policy
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Apr 26, 2017 17:54
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brugroffil posted:That could really help for residential and to some extent commercial, but it wouldn't be too helpful for industrial. industrial needs nukes or where available, geothermal but again this is all pointless musing because we are not going to change what we are doing and climatologists will continue finding more evidence that their predictions were conservative and everything is grtting worse faster than they predicted the ship sailed on doing anything to save the climate a long-rear end time ago, like literally our best hope at this point is a fuckin solar shade, that's how hosed we are
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Apr 26, 2017 17:58
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brugroffil posted:come on, now you're just being dumb. "drop solar cells over a few national parks." California's managed to figure out how to deploy a fuckload of solar without dropping it on Yosemite or King's Canyon. Much of Nevada and Utah are uninhabited wastelands. Wind has a high land use ratio, but I'm not sure how much those figures consider the mixed usage where you've got turbines plopped down in the middle of farms maybe taking up an acre each out of thousands of acres. turbines plopped into farmland is just as bad as wilderness because the farm will then be producing less food or clothing fiber to suit other basic needs. you will not be putting down a single wind turbine because that's pointless; the electrical equipment you need to hook it up to will cost more than the turbine itself and make it completely infeasible economically. the entire reason large scale wind farms are the preferred way of doing wind is because you can collectivize these needs and capture an economy of scale. as such, you will either displace a fair bit of farmland (and the farm will grow in other ways, still displacing wildlands) or reduce cereal and cotton outputs, which means more expensive food and clothing. which again, hurt the poor much, much more than anyone else. Coolguye has issued a correction as of 18:11 on Apr 26, 2017 |
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Apr 26, 2017 18:09
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Coolguye posted:california's power mix is still 7.7% solar. natural gas has a smaller footprint in land in california even when you include the mining zones out of state and produces almost 8x the gigawatt hours. to scale solar you would, in fact, probably be forced into dropping solar stations into yosemite. No, that is still dumb, and nobody is actually advocating for 100% solar. quote:turbines plopped into farmland is just as bad as wilderness because the farm will then be producing less food or clothing fiber to suit other basic needs. you will not be putting down a single wind turbine because that's pointless; the electrical equipment you need to hook it up to will cost more than the turbine itself and make it completely infeasible economically. the entire reason large scale wind farms are the preferred way of doing wind is because you can collectivize these needs and capture an economy of scale. I didn't say anything about a single wind turbine wind farm? I live in the midwest and we have plenty of these. The turbine footprint takes up a negligible amount of acreage when you're dealing with commercial sized farms. Wind farms are huge in total acreage because of how far apart the turbines need to be spaced, but a "10,000 acre wind farm" is probably only really taking up 10 acres of actual farmland and the rest is perfectly farmable. If you're talking about out west, then it's just turbines on rocky hills that aren't be farmed anyway or can still easily be used for livestock grazing. e: It's not like we have a farmland shortage so talking about how we'll be producing less food due to wind turbines is crazy.
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Apr 26, 2017 18:14
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they wanted to build a windfarm in some hills in upstate ny a while ago and nimbys blocked it from happening, like that is an actual major hurdle for wind farms as dumb as that is iirc something similar happened off cape cod too
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Apr 26, 2017 18:16
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brugroffil posted:No, that is still dumb, and nobody is actually advocating for 100% solar. quote:I didn't say anything about a single wind turbine wind farm? I live in the midwest and we have plenty of these. The turbine footprint takes up a negligible amount of acreage when you're dealing with commercial sized farms. quote:Wind farms are huge in total acreage because of how far apart the turbines need to be spaced, but a "10,000 acre wind farm" is probably only really taking up 10 acres of actual farmland and the rest is perfectly farmable. If you're talking about out west, then it's just turbines on rocky hills that aren't be farmed anyway or can still easily be used for livestock grazing. quote:e: It's not like we have a farmland shortage so talking about how we'll be producing less food due to wind turbines is crazy. financially racist posted:iirc something similar happened off cape cod too
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Apr 26, 2017 18:28
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brugroffil posted:hey guys I don't disagree I am a fan of nuclear but I'm just saying economically they're not going to be build because they're a lot more expensive than natural gas! I think that holds true even if you put a decent carbon tax on natural gas. "the free market would never allow nuclear power to exist" I insist, as oil billionaires simultaneously poison my air and water and crush my testicles with a bucket excavator power production doesn't need to be profitable
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Apr 26, 2017 18:41
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financially racist posted:they wanted to build a windfarm in some hills in upstate ny a while ago and nimbys blocked it from happening, like that is an actual major hurdle for wind farms as dumb as that is they've been trying to offshore wind farms in New England for years but it turns out the kind of rich dipshits who think their beach house views would be ruined by the existence of windmills have more combined political influence than everyone else
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Apr 26, 2017 18:42
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Why do we leave power generation and other utilities to the free market? Power and the infrastructure to support it is a good example of a public good that should be heavily managed by a government entity. Well, I mean I know *why* we leave it to market forces - people who were rich and wanted to get *more* rich argued that we should and no one with any significant power argued the other way - but I don't know why people continue to think thats a good and cool thing.
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Apr 26, 2017 18:45
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Fullhouse posted:"the free market would never allow nuclear power to exist" I insist, as oil billionaires simultaneously poison my air and water and crush my testicles with a bucket excavator it does, however, still need to be affordable to the end consumer unless we're fine with telling the poor they can live without heating, cooling, and refrigeration. Not a Step posted:Why do we leave power generation and other utilities to the free market? Power and the infrastructure to support it is a good example of a public good that should be heavily managed by a government entity. power companies are already so beholden to the state that arguably state politicians have more control over their affairs than their own management boards. it's a little bit like the fannie mae poo poo. yeah, okay, sure, ostensibly fannie mae is private, but nobody REALLY believes that. even here in kansas, aka libertarilandia under brownback, sunflower energy had to promise to retire two busted-rear end coal-fired power plants before the state would okay a single modern coal plant because a couple state senators were sick and tired of the pollution and radiation complaints from their constituents. sunflower also routinely signs contracts to keep energy prices under a certain dollar amount because the government doesn't want to loving hear about 'supply and demand' if some cumdrinker decides to spike prices so they effectively force price fixing on the utility. again, this is KANSAS. Coolguye has issued a correction as of 18:54 on Apr 26, 2017 |
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Apr 26, 2017 18:47
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Coolguye posted:it does, however, still need to be affordable to the end consumer unless we're fine with telling the poor they can live without heating, cooling, and refrigeration. if the state directly controls power generation and distribution they can charge whatever the hell they want for it, don't give me this "good energy is bad... for the poor!!!" talking point poo poo
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Apr 26, 2017 18:52
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Fullhouse posted:if the state directly controls power generation and distribution they can charge whatever the hell they want for it, don't give me this "good energy is bad... for the poor!!!" talking point poo poo so what is your idea here, that taxes pay for energy generation? who is going to shoulder those taxes, because like every other tax it sure won't be the rich
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Apr 26, 2017 18:55
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i mean most people who want power to be more publicly controlled also want to greatly increase taxes on the rich, so also i have less than zero faith that the current conditions power companies operate under are in any way beneficial to the end user. imo anything as important as our power grid must be socialized (see also: food supply, telecommunications etc.).
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Apr 26, 2017 18:58
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Coolguye posted:so what is your idea here, that taxes pay for energy generation? who is going to shoulder those taxes, because like every other tax it sure won't be the rich Well, the poor *already* pay for power generation, so this seems like an excuse to do nothing? If power companies are already beholden to the state why not just take the extra step and make the state directly responsible so we know who to blame and demand action from?
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Apr 26, 2017 19:02
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financially racist posted:i mean most people who want power to be more publicly controlled also want to greatly increase taxes on the rich, so they make more money by spending tons on questionably useful capital projects and lobbying their state boards for rate increases! TVA already owns and operators several nuclear plants, and publicly owned utilities are at least partial owners of many other ones including Santee Cooper who controls much (all?) of SC's electrical grid and has a stake in VC Summer.
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Apr 26, 2017 19:03
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the power grid itself is socialized in that taxes pay for power transmission, the only thing that's private are the generation stations and they literally cannot function unless every politician involved in the area is happy with them. i honestly don't see what nationalizing the generation stations would really do unless you think government dial-twiddlers are somehow inherently more competent or virtuous than corporate stooges, in which case that's a philosophical argument that could go both ways by bringing up the whole 'market incentive to innovate' thing and ugh i'm tired of that back and forthNot a Step posted:Well, the poor *already* pay for power generation, so this seems like an excuse to do nothing? e: i guess this is kinda the same thing as asking, if defense contractors are already beholden to the DoD, why doesn't the DoD just do all its research itself? answer because management is really hard and the government gets geometrically worse at it the more it has to do Coolguye has issued a correction as of 19:16 on Apr 26, 2017 |
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Apr 26, 2017 19:10
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yeah the government uses contractors and public-private partnerships out of respect for market innovations and from fear of bureaucratic inefficiency and definitely not because Ayn Rand acolytes have been screaming about the government butting into their profit margins since the new deal
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Apr 26, 2017 19:24
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i mean sprawling bureaucracies are basically synonymous with decadent stasis and inefficiency and that was true before rand was even born so kinda? just look at the ming dynasty or the byzantine empire government being bad at certain things isn't new or controversial, there's no need to make this into a randian dystopia lol
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Apr 26, 2017 19:33
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Coolguye posted:i mean sprawling bureaucracies are basically synonymous with decadent stasis and inefficiency and that was true before rand was even born so kinda? just look at the ming dynasty or the byzantine empire let me tell you about the finely tuned bureaucracies that are California utilities companies
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Apr 26, 2017 19:34
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Coolguye posted:i mean sprawling bureaucracies are basically synonymous with decadent stasis and inefficiency and that was true before rand was even born so kinda? just look at the ming dynasty or the byzantine empire this implies that private companies are ever better at this poo poo than governments are and just lmao if you really think that is the case
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Apr 26, 2017 19:40
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brugroffil posted:let me tell you about the finely tuned bureaucracies that are California utilities companies a well oiled machine, they is financially racist posted:this implies that private companies are ever better at this poo poo than governments are and just lmao if you really think that is the case
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Apr 26, 2017 19:41
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nuclear power is stupidly expensive in the US both because of the inevitable lawsuits from retards and because for some dumb reason nuclear regulations in this country are designed purposely around a concept called ratcheting, meaning they always get tighter but are never supposed to be loosened (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Apr 26, 2017 22:04
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did anyone say thorium yet? or thorium salt reactor? those are the cool kids of nuclear power and i wanna hang out with them
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Apr 26, 2017 22:10
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other reactors have such fragile egos that if you mess with them even slightly you get a radioactive hot-take floating over half the country thorium would just sit back and chill tho
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Apr 26, 2017 22:13
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