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Lynata wrote:Yeah right, because uranium mining is so healthy compared to coal mining.

http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/pgms/worknotify/uranium.html
http://www.hcn.org/wotr/lets-not-forget-the-hidden-costs-of-uranium-mining
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/250010691/Uranium-mining-left-a-legacy-of-death.html?pg=all

But hey, nuclear power will save the world, right? It's what the company says so it must be true!

If I may be so blunt, yes it will, and you have fething idea what your talking about. In 20-50 (depending on which model you use) were going to hit a point that the amount of money it takes to get coal and oil out of the ground becomes so great that it is no longer sustainable. Couple this whit massively increasing energy consumption in developing nations, particularly india and china, and we have very few viable energy sources. Hydroelectric, wind, solar, and geothermal are all highly dependent on location, and weather conditions, hydroelectric and solar are both highly damaging to the environment (geothermal's pretty clean and we currently don;t have the data to know the long term effects of massive use of wind farms). Nuclear is currently the cleanest energy source available (based upon tons of CO2 per kilawatt/hour) and when using proper breeder reactors, to convert uranium into thorium to be used again, produces very little waste. It is also currently one of safest power sources based despite what you may claim.

Hopefully we will develop fusion in the next 20-30 ears and then it doesn't really matter (yay, almost free energy) but if we want to maintain are current state or continue to grow then we need to see a massive growth in nuclear reactors or were going to have a serious fething problem.

youbedead wrote:
Hydroelectric, wind, solar, and geothermal are all highly dependent on location, and weather conditions, hydroelectric and solar are both highly damaging to the environment (geothermal's pretty clean and we currently don;t have the data to know the long term effects of massive use of wind farms).

Hydro is damaging to the environment in the sense that it sacrifice a very large part of territory in exchange for a constant and renewable source of energy. While there's Native all across the Laurentian Plateau, they are in very small communities, and the health risks associated with mercury spike (which lasts between 6 to 20 years) have been known for about 40 years now. With 60 current installations in Quebec deserving Qc, On and some of the New England States, more currently building, and 2 new competitors starting off in the next years (Hydro Maritime and another one in New York, IIRC) both with the stated intent of selling primarily to the U.S market, I think it's safe to say that nuclear power won't, at least not singlehandedly, save the world. There's also the advantage that the fluctuations of price in fossil fuel doesn't at all affects hydro electricity, while it does for the extraction and transportation of uranium.

But I agree with you that nuclear is almost entirely safe, and incredibly clean in comparison to coal.

Kovnik Obama wrote:

youbedead wrote:
Hydroelectric, wind, solar, and geothermal are all highly dependent on location, and weather conditions, hydroelectric and solar are both highly damaging to the environment (geothermal's pretty clean and we currently don;t have the data to know the long term effects of massive use of wind farms).

Hydro is damaging to the environment in the sense that it sacrifice a very large part of territory in exchange for a constant and renewable source of energy. While there's Native all across the Laurentian Plateau, they are in very small communities, and the health risks associated with mercury spike (which lasts between 6 to 20 years) have been known for about 40 years now. With 60 current installations in Quebec deserving Qc, On and some of the New England States, more currently building, and 2 new competitors starting off in the next years (Hydro Maritime and another one in New York, IIRC) both with the stated intent of selling primarily to the U.S market, I think it's safe to say that nuclear power won't, at least not singlehandedly, save the world. There's also the advantage that the fluctuations of price in fossil fuel doesn't at all affects hydro electricity, while it does for the extraction and transportation of uranium.

But I agree with you that nuclear is almost entirely safe, and incredibly clean in comparison to coal.

The issue with hydro as a said earlier is that its extremely location dependent, there are large swathes of india, china, and africa that it just can't viably sustain. Personally I'm not sure if we can actually afford the impact of damming all of the worlds major rivers (you could say we would be ...damning them). The hoover damn essentially killed the Colorado river in Arizona and its estuary, and the NIle River dam is severely limiting the silt deposits in its estuary.

So I do think that hydro has its place but it has some pretty serious ramifications to look at before it should be implemented.

Geothermal anyone?

Squigsquasher wrote:Geothermal anyone?

Can't drive an 18 wheeler on geothermal. Not a lot of geothermal in the Omaha.

May I suggest cutting down to 4 wheels, good sir?

Squigsquasher wrote:Geothermal anyone?

Again, only viable in certain areas. If you're in one those areas then its one of the best


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Squigsquasher wrote:May I suggest cutting down to 4 wheels, good sir?

And how would you suggest transporting goods, semi's are pretty damn efficient.

Squigsquasher wrote:May I suggest cutting down to 4 wheels, good sir?

So you're not into Logistics I take it. I'd advise start growing your own food then...now.

Oh. I get it.

There was me thinking you yanks had made an 18 wheeled saloon car.

Squigsquasher wrote:Oh. I get it.

There was me thinking you yanks had made an 18 wheeled saloon car.

Oh, no we have those as well

Those are powered on grain alcohol and vodka.

Frazzled wrote:Those are powered on grain alcohol and vodka.

And guns, dont forget guns

youbedead wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Those are powered on grain alcohol and vodka.

And guns, dont forget guns

Well, thats how you get the alcohol and vodka.

Frazzled wrote:

youbedead wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Those are powered on grain alcohol and vodka.

And guns, dont forget guns

Well, thats how you get the alcohol and vodka.

Now I'm thinking about how many guns you would have to strap to a car so that you could propel yourself with the recoil.

A lot.

Squigsquasher wrote:A lot.

Maybe this thing will work

What...The...Hell...Is...That?

Squigsquasher wrote:What...The...Hell...Is...That?

Thats a GAU Avenger Gatling gun

from the A-10 warthog


It's purty

Lynata wrote:But hey, nuclear power will save the world, right?

Yup.

All we have to do is nuke everyone else, so they won;t need energy anymore. Just like after WWII when most of the world's factories were blown to bitz in the war, we Americans became the only game in town!



In my part of the fields, they have massive wind arrays dotting the countryside, and there is still plenty of room for more. Granted, I'm not foolish enough to think that will solve all our energy needs, but every little bit helps. We just are't desperate enough yet.

Apparently some didn't realize it was not my intention to recommend replacing one unhealthy, polluting and dangerous source of energy with another unhealthy, polluting and dangerous source of energy. In fact, I was doing the opposite, criticizing that very notion that seemed to downplay some very nasty risks. And that these risks are not limited to the miners themselves. Like when 600 people - 30% of the entire population of some town - are diagnosed with cancer due to vicinity.

Either way, when defending nuclear energy by pointing a finger at coal mining being a cause of cancer, I do believe that uranium mining having the same effect is something that should be taken into consideration.
http://www.emnrd.state.nm.us/MMD/MARP/Documents/MK023ER_20081212_Marquez_NNELC-Acoma-Comments-AttachmentE-UExposureSummary.pdf

I wouldn't have done so if people wouldn't propagate the lie that nuclear power is "clean".

Easy E wrote:In my part of the fields, they have massive wind arrays dotting the countryside, and there is still plenty of room for more. Granted, I'm not foolish enough to think that will solve all our energy needs, but every little bit helps. We just are't desperate enough yet.

Yup. Meanwhile, half of Germany ran on solar power and Japan develops a long range power line capable of transporting electricity with almost no loss in transmission.

Then again, the US seem to be painfully slow to adopt new ideas like healthcare these days - maybe it just takes another couple decades. :(

Wait if half of Germany's power was solar, why did they have all those pimpin nuke reactors and need gas from Mother Russia. Methinks it is crap.

Oh wait it says it right there:
"Despite the feat, it is worth noting that solar power still only accounts for around four percent of Germany's annual electricity generation -- and Germany has almost as much solar power capacity as the rest of the world combined. The German government is committed to reducing carbon emissions to 40 percent of 1990 levels by 2020."

Of course. You don't change an energy source over night - but as you can plainly see, they are working on it, and the results so far are fairly promising. All nuclear power plants in Germany are scheduled to go off-line by the year 2022, and eight reactors have been shut down already.

As for the gas, most of that is for heating, actually. Germany doesn't really use electrical heating that much.

And not to mention Solar Power(especially in Germany) is heavily subsidized, without the gov't there would be no solar panels at all.

The fact is, nuclear will make a comeback simply due to the fact that it's inexpensive and fairly safe

Hey, I never said nuclear was clean, just that it was cleaner.

Germany has a lot of solar panels because the government paid for them. Over the last decade or so, the Germany government has spent over $130 billion on solar subsidies. The payoff? Only a slight reduction in traditional power generation, coupled with an overall increase in the cost of power. I'm surprised it has taken the government so long to realize that Germany is not the best location for solar power. They are now cutting back on their funding for solar, because it's clear that after ten years they haven't made a dent.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/project_syndicate/2012/02/why_germany_is_phasing_out_its_solar_power_subsidies_.html

Lynata wrote:Of course. You don't change an energy source over night - but as you can plainly see, they are working on it, and the results so far are fairly promising. All nuclear power plants in Germany are scheduled to go off-line by the year 2022, and eight reactors have been shut down already.

As for the gas, most of that is for heating, actually. Germany doesn't really use electrical heating that much.

So its not half their power needs then. Gas is just another form of power.
But Now they must do the bidding of Putin. Choice!

Huffy wrote:And not to mention Solar Power(especially in Germany) is heavily subsidized, without the gov't there would be no solar panels at all.
The fact is, nuclear will make a comeback simply due to the fact that it's inexpensive and fairly safe

The fact is that nuclear energy is actually more expensive. The lobby is just good at concealing the true cost by not mentioning mining and disposal expenses, and by simply not paying insurance (the only business allowed to do so), thus only giving the operating cost for the reactor itself. When anything goes wrong, the money goes directly out of the taxpayer's pocket. And the very same people that are now yelling "this can't happen again it's all so safe" after Fukushima did so already after Tchernobyl - until Fukushima happened.

Also:
http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/us-nuclear-power-industry-please-take-our-subsidies
http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_and_global_warming/nuclear-power-subsidies-report.html

Who's heavily subsidized now?

elrabin wrote:Germany has a lot of solar panels because the government paid for them.

So the same reason the US has a lot of nuclear reactors, then.

elrabin wrote:Over the last decade or so, the Germany government has spent over $130 billion on solar subsidies. The payoff? Only a slight reduction in traditional power generation, coupled with an overall increase in the cost of power.

That's BS. The longer a solar cell runs, the more cost-effective it becomes. Solar panels have a warranty of about 20 years (+/- 5 depending on manufacturer), and they amortilize way before that time.

The actual reason for why subsidies are cut is because newly installed solar cells last year accounted for more than 7 GW of electricity production - an amount more than twice the actual aim of said subsidies. In other words, they're cutting down because more people than anticipated were taking the government up on its offer.
There have also been voices that the solar sector has been subsidized too heavily at cost of the other alternative forms of power generation, however. This sort of criticism does hold some merit, and wind as well as geothermal are sources that do require more development, especially as they are cheaper than both nuclear and solar.

Yet, a slight dent, really?

Lynata wrote:

elrabin wrote:Germany has a lot of solar panels because the government paid for them.

So the same reason the US has a lot of nuclear reactors, then.

Sure. But it's hard to make an argument to spend so much money on an energy source that doesn't reduce your need of existing energy generation plants. This is the problem that Germany is running into -- you have to replace the output of the Nuclear plants somewhere. I don't believe there is a solid plan right now, other than ramping up fossil plants. Germany is planning on installing a very large offshore wind farm, but no one really knows how this would actually perform.

Lynata wrote:Yet, a slight dent, really?

Would you like to look at the average case? Germany is a very cloudy country, so their PV cells typically do not produce very much power. In 2011, solar accounted for a massive 3% of total electricity. Wind power, on the other hand, accounted for 7.7% percent of Germany's electricity use in 2011. In 2004, Germany cut subsidies to Wind in favor of Solar -- now Germany has reversed course and cut Solar subsidies in favor of Wind. Go figure.


By the way, I'm all for industry shifting to renewable energy. But the truth is that Germany and many countries including the US have heavily funded Solar in order to ramp up manufacturing in their countries. Now that it's abundantly clear that China can make PV cells for far cheaper than the rest of the world, I think you will see less interest in Solar in the West. The US has implemented tarrifs as high as 250% on Chinese solar cells in order to help keep the US solar industries alive, but that will only serve to slow down Solar adoption in the States.

http://inhabitat.com/solar-prices-expected-to-rise-as-us-places-huge-tariffs-on-chinese-produced-pv-cells/

elrabin wrote:Sure. But it's hard to make an argument to spend so much money on an energy source that doesn't reduce your need of existing energy generation plants. This is the problem that Germany is running into -- you have to replace the output of the Nuclear plants somewhere. I don't believe there is a solid plan right now, other than ramping up fossil plants. Germany is planning on installing a very large offshore wind farm, but no one really knows how this would actually perform.

Touché - although that really is just a matter of distribution. If a nation truly wants, they could just pump all the millions that are still going into nuclear subsidiaries into the deploying renewable energy collectors. The concept itself is sound and already employed in a number of model towns:

http://www.naturalnews.com/034440_renewable_energy_Germany_power_grid.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-power-grid-of-their-own-german-village-becomes-model-for-renewable-energy-a-820369.html
http://www.wind-works.org/articles/DardesheimGermanysRenewableEnergyCity.html

The tricky part is, of course, that it takes a lot of time and money to replace the need for established energy sources in the first place. On the long run, however, it should pay off. Both in money as well as lives saved.

Another way would be combining a number of newly developed technologies for greater effect, such as Japan's Sahara Breeder Project, which is basically lots of solar cells + superconducting power lines = long range energy supply. I've seen a rather impressive report on NHK about this project lately.
http://www.ssb-foundation.com/

It's not an easy task for sure, but the important thing is that there needs to be a will for change, yet lots of people still have that idea of nuclear power being "cheap" and "safe" stuck in their head, so naturally an "all is well" attitude would not exactly be a good basis for technological development.

Personally, I'm actually sceptical of Germany's plan to pull the plug of all nuclear plants by 2022, as I don't think the country will be able to provide sufficient coverage by then. I like to be realistic about this, and whilst I applaud the general idea of the plan, I think the exit needs to be done in a number of phases, and stretched out on longer terms. Part of me suspects the current plan to be deliberate sabotage in order to brainwash people into believing that it would cost an insane amount of money by deliberately producing this crisis. The German Chancellor and her party were fervent defenders of nuclear power (even having suspended an earlier withdrawal plan set in motion by the previous administration), after all, and obviously only turned around to propose an exit strategy because they knew that holding on to it in the wake of Fukushima would have been political suicide.

You keep saying nuclear is is dangerous, exensive, prone to risks etc. however all forms of power are more expensive, dirtier and more hazardous then nulcear. However your using a flawed metric, you need to look at cost per kWh. If you do do then you find that nuclear is one of the cleanest sources available.



Further more if we look at cost from a country that get 75% of its power then we find that nuclear is surpassed only by hydroelectric.


Hydro power 20
Nuclear 50
Natural gas turbines without CO2 capture 61
Onshore wind 69
Solar farms 293

Numbers are Euros per mWh.


As far as waste goes again we look to france. France, thankfully, understands that its a good idea to recycle nuclear fuel to be used again, something which is not done in the us. By doing this they get the amount of waste produced to a very small number. A family of for over the course of 20 years produce an amount of waste about the size of lighter. THey have already started construction of type III breeder reactors which will reduce the amount of waste further.

For safety nuclear power is still significantly safer then any other form of power

Energy Source Death Rate (deaths per TWh) CORRECTED

Coal (elect, heat,cook –world avg) 100 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity)
Coal electricity – world avg 60 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity)
Coal (elect,heat,cook)– China 170
Coal electricity- China 90
Coal – USA 15
Oil 36 (36% of world energy)
Natural Gas 4 (21% of world energy)
Biofuel/Biomass 12
Peat 12
Solar (rooftop) 0.44 (0.2% of world energy for all solar)
Wind 0.15 (1.6% of world energy)
Hydro 0.10 (europe death rate, 2.2% of world energy)
Hydro - world including Banqiao) 1.4 (about 2500 TWh/yr and 171,000 Banqiao dead)
Nuclear 0.04 (5.9% of world energy)