[Kosh]

They seem to have reversed their anti-nuke position

Timed for the return of parliament and accompanied by a roof-top protest and a full-page advertisement in The Times, Greenpeace appealed to leaders of all political parties to "Please steal our policies."

 

But for the first time, there was no explicit policy against nuclear power. Instead there were stipulations for any new coal-fired power plants to come with full carbon dioxide abatement and for renewables to make up 15% of all energy.

Finally something sensible. I do wonder how long it will take them to undo the years of anti-nuclear hysteria they've managed to whip up.

[Liberator]

Firstly, it's good to see you still around to make posts, Kosh.

Secondly, they're fears are based on accidents that happened decades ago, and while they're largely overblown we need a better solution that simply sticking it in a cave.

Lastly, I have yet to see a renewable with the energy density of petroleum.  Our technology, our culture, our very way of life is based on the ease of petroleum in handling and in coaxing it's energy content into usable forms.  The only thing that I can think of that gets close is direct solar conversion, with the limit being the space required for the conversion cells and the relatively poor storage methods available.

Also, Greenpeace has been something of a joke for a long time, enjoying the benefits of high technology while campaigning for it's decrement to the ill of society in general.

[Spicious]

Lastly, I have yet to see a renewable with the energy density of petroleum.  Our technology, our culture, our very way of life is based on the ease of petroleum in handling and in coaxing it's energy content into usable forms.  The only thing that I can think of that gets close is direct solar conversion, with the limit being the space required for the conversion cells and the relatively poor storage methods available.

And that's why we should squander our increasingly limited quantities of such an important resource in the most unnecessary and inefficient ways possible rather than conserving it for those applications for which it is currently irreplaceable.

[Kosh]

Lastly, I have yet to see a renewable with the energy density of petroleum.  Our technology, our culture, our very way of life is based on the ease of petroleum in handling and in coaxing it's energy content into usable forms.  The only thing that I can think of that gets close is direct solar conversion, with the limit being the space required for the conversion cells and the relatively poor storage methods available.

Actually given that electric motors are significantly more efficient than ICU's you don't actually need anything with the energy density of petroleum. In your average ICU most of that energy is wasted. That being said our current set of batteries are not good enough.

Something else to consider is that the amount of biomatter, including fossil fuels, is inherently significantly more limited than metals.

[Tomo]

Nuclear is actually the only baseload option.

I have never understood the 'wind power' concept, as it fundamentally can't work.

The electricity infrastructure in every country requires two main classes of generation:
1) 'Base Load'
This produces a continuous, high level of efficient power generation, 24 hours a day. It can't react to changes in load very quickly because it's made of very big devices - it may take half an hour for a given plant to take up the slack.
However, the size means that each plant is very efficient - big transformers, big rotors etc. mean that the energy gets from the axle to the grid with extremely small losses.

2) 'Peaking' or 'Surge' plants.
These produce relatively small amounts of power 'on demand', to cover for surges in demand (eg when everyone makes a cup of tea in the commercial break of a popular TV programme). They have to respond in seconds or minutes at most - a system might have some plants that respond in seconds, with other taking over a few minutes later if the surge is prolonged.
The surge will either drop back to base load, or it will continue (eg when offices and factories open at the start of the day) and the operators decide whether to ramp up the 'big iron' or to let the peakers take the strain.

Regardless of which technologies are actually in use, these are the two kinds of generation required.

Coal and Nuclear fit easily into the Base Load class.
Hydroelectric is unique in that it can go into either class depending on the design, but is more commonly seen in the Peak class - eg Dinorwig pumped storage in Wales.

Some forms of Micro-generation can fit into the 'Peak' class, but only if it can be turned on quickly when required.

Wind doesn't fit into any of these sections.
In fact, the only place Wind could be of use, is combined with a pumped storage system and used when available to pump the water.

So, which 'green' technologies exist to take the base load?

Nuclear, Nuclear and, erm, Nuclear. It has built-in 100% capture (unlike coal etc) and doesn't require the flooding of massive areas (unlike baseload hydro).
In some places Geothermal can be used, but there aren't many countries that have a sufficiently low demand and enough geothermal available for it to be worthwhile.

As for solar - sorry, but photovoltaic cells are currently damaging to the environment, because it takes so much energy to make them. A few years ago, they took more energy to make than they would ever generate in their useful life. While this has improved, they're still pretty terrible.
Solar furnaces appear to work reasonably well, but they're pretty hard to maintain and use a lot of space. There are large experimental ones in southern Spain and France, but they're currently quite low yield.
- They work best in sunny climes, which tend to be rather dusty.

The Seville solar furnace plant is expected to generate approx. 11 MW when it's finished. By comparison, each of the four Calder Hall nuclear reactors in Sellafield generated 50MW when turned on in 1956.

All of this is set to become much worse, because so many people are keen on electric vehicles - they've got to be charged somehow.
In fact, hydrogen (or other manufactured combustible)-powered vehicles make much more sense than pure electric because of the charging problem. It's much easier to take a tank full of fluid around and pump it into vehicles as required than to try to charge big sets of batteries.

(edit to add)
Some people argue that charging massive numbers of electric vehicles would remove the need for 'peaking' generators, as the charging can be speeded or slowed to 'manage' the load and smooth it out, but that still means that we need a *lot* more baseload!

[Spicious]

Some people seem to disagree with you.

[Tomo]

Well, the "Baseload Fallacy" pdf doesn't exist, so can't directly comment.

However, if you look at the historical loading trends of any industrialised nation, you'll see that a large baseload is absolutely necessary. You can either make that with a very large number of small plants, or a smaller number of larger plants.

Ignoring the prime mover itself, small generators and transformers are always less efficient in terms of axle power to grid power conversion than large ones.
Furthermore, maintaining one big plant is much cheaper than many small ones of the same total output.

Thus big plants are better.

"Solar Troughs" are a variant of the solar furnace aiming at lower core temperatures - this makes them less efficient (thermodynamics) so larger, but probably easier to maintain.
So the various Solar Thermal plants are probably feasible for some locations (hot empty deserts), like Geothermal is for others (Iceland).

The Wind-generated Electricity paper is simply wrong.
It's made the fundamental mistake of assuming that Average output means Continuous output. It doesn't - some days a given wind plant can generate a lot of energy, on others days it cannot. This gives you some kind of reasonable average output over a year.

But you as a consumer don't want to find that on some days you can run every appliance in your house/office/factory, while on other days you can only run the bedside lamp.
Even though you're still getting the same energy over the year, no business can operate that way.

You can't assume that a wind plant 100 miles away will always take up the slack, because weather systems are large. On top of that, each wind turbine is always very small.
This small size has two effects - the efficiency is low (many gearboxes, small rotors, transformers etc) and the maintenance costs are relatively high.

[IceFire]

Nuclear I still think is a great way forward and the accidents of the past are something that has to be learned from and not repeated.  There are all kinds of different ways to do nuclear power generation and some are proving to be much safer than others.  With some more R&D I'm willing to bet that waste (spent fuel rods) can be minimized and a safety massively increased.

Also there are plenty of ways to do the same things were doing today but more efficiently.  Its a slow path but we already have all sorts of devices that smartly power up and down in segments to conserve energy when its not needed to be used.  That needs to continue and improve.

None of these things are radical but I think if we attack this problem from both the efficiency angle and from the methods of providing power angle we'll be able to make use of alternatives from petroleum - which is great as a source but ultimately limited.  We have to do this now while we still have the petroleum... eventually its going to be scarce and moving to something else will be extremely difficult.

[portej05]

Tomo: I can't find the exact reference I was after, but it was an EWEA report. This one covers some of the issues: http://www.ewea.org/fileadmin/ewea_documents/documents/publications/reports/TradeWind_Report_01.pdf.

It's worth a read for anyone that is interested in large power networks involving wind energy.

Just had a look at the Base Load Fallacy document.
The website that is referenced as the authors institution currently bears this message http://energyscience.org.au/: "The EnergyScience site is under construction and should be available by 30 October 2007."
There is no mention of the efficiency of storage systems in the paper, but there is a lot of talk about them.
I didn't intend to review that paper, so I'll stop here.

The major takeaway is that the mix of power sources within the energy network is important because no one source has all the electrical characteristics required to supply energy to the grid.

[MP-Ryan]

While they're UK branch seems that it may be getting a clue, the Canadian branch sure hasn't.  Even with all the protests in the northern Albertan oilpatch over the past couple months, they've still been explicitly advocating against nuclear power, particularly in Saskatchewan where the provincial government is starting to get serious about building a large nuclear generation facility.

Really, Greenpeace seems to have its collective head in the clouds - you can't demand that current power generation facilities be closed and simultaneously preach against its most viable clean replacements.  It would be great if everyone had the hydroelectric generation options of my home province of British Columbia, but the simple fact is that most of the world doesn't.

If Greenpeace would actually adopt a sensible approach to the practical issues of maintaining infrastructure while addressing climate change, they might find more people would listen to them.

[MR_T3D]

really i think the best way to deal with any/all nuclear waste is, pending orbital elevator, shoot it at like the sun/moon/something.
ALTHOUGH if there's water on the moon, though, it would not be that good a target

[Tomo]

Tomo: I can't find the exact reference I was after, but it was an EWEA report. This one covers some of the issues: http://www.ewea.org/fileadmin/ewea_documents/documents/publications/reports/TradeWind_Report_01.pdf.

It's worth a read for anyone that is interested in large power networks involving wind energy.

Thanks, will take a look.

There is no mention of the efficiency of storage systems in the paper, but there is a lot of talk about them.

That would be because the only high energy-density storage systems that exist are pumped-storage hydroelectric. They are around 75% efficient - Dinorwig uses approx. 1925MWh to generate 1440MWh (full cycle).
All the other methods (flywheel, supercap, batteries) are very low energy density so wouldn't do much for the system.

The major takeaway is that the mix of power sources within the energy network is important because no one source has all the electrical characteristics required to supply energy to the grid.

Well, quite. I did say that!
The core issue is that the availability has to be both predictable and controllable.
Wind is neither of those, so can really only be used in one situation - coupled with a pumped-storage hydroelectric as a combined 'peaker'.
So if the wind is blowing, you can use it to pump the header reservoir. If it's not, you buy the electricity needed from the grid at a time of low load.

[Ford Prefect]

really i think the best way to deal with any/all nuclear waste is, pending orbital elevator, shoot it at like the sun/moon/something.
ALTHOUGH if there's water on the moon, though, it would not be that good a target

I used to agree, until someone raised the statistical certainty of future accidents during launch or ascent. The consequences of even one such accident involving a spacecraft laden with nuclear waste would be disastrous, to say the least.

I'm not opposed to nuclear power, but the question of what to do with the waste is kind of a huge problem.

[Ziame]

Greenpeace? Bunch of idiots-believin-they-do-right led by guys who just want to get moneysmoneysmoneys. My opinion at least.

Solar/Wind Plants = fail. It costs the environment more to produce them than it gives to save the enviroment (I hope the sentence is clear)

Nuclear Plants - basically win, though the radioactive waste is somethin we gotta get rid off and noone has any idea how to do that. Maybe drop it off on Mercury/Venus and don't give a damn? Dunno if that's a good/bad idea really

Coal plants : well, as long as we have coal they work, right? Though the fumes aren't so good for the enviroment... nevertheless, producing solar batteries prolly produces more fumes and bad **** so yeah right with you Greenpeace.

Not to mention that whole ecology is overrated. Sure, we shouldn't pollute as much, but we are not SOOO BAD. One volcano eruption produces more bad things than humanity in one generation.

[MR_T3D]

really i think the best way to deal with any/all nuclear waste is, pending orbital elevator, shoot it at like the sun/moon/something.
ALTHOUGH if there's water on the moon, though, it would not be that good a target

I used to agree, until someone raised the statistical certainty of future accidents during launch or ascent. The consequences of even one such accident involving a spacecraft laden with nuclear waste would be disastrous, to say the least.

I'm not opposed to nuclear power, but the question of what to do with the waste is kind of a huge problem.

i was thinking a big-ass coil gun or something, literally just shoot the waste at something that doesn't matter, a ship would seem failure-prone, true. but if an effective elevator were devised, then an orbital gun that doubles as planetary defense(from possible asteroids, DUH!) or as a launch platform for probes, hell this idea get smarter the more i think about it...

[Scotty]

Integral Fast Reactor (also known as Advanced Liquid Metal Reactor).  Google it.

[castor]

Nuclear Plants - basically win, though the radioactive waste is somethin we gotta get rid off and noone has any idea how to do that. Maybe drop it off on Mercury/Venus and don't give a damn?

But how to drop something that is already at the bottom of a well? Lets play with the numbers a bit..
All together, the plants today produce about 8600 tons of highly active waste/year, covering maybe 15% of the total need for electricity. Grow it to 100% and you get 52000 tons of waste/year (these figures are very rough, but they should work well enough to give a feel of the scale).

For comparison, one space shuttle launch can drag less than 4 tons up to GTO. I wouldn't put any hopes on the "launch crap to space" idea personally. It simply does not work.

[Mongoose]

Well, quite. I did say that!
The core issue is that the availability has to be both predictable and controllable.
Wind is neither of those, so can really only be used in one situation - coupled with a pumped-storage hydroelectric as a combined 'peaker'.
So if the wind is blowing, you can use it to pump the header reservoir. If it's not, you buy the electricity needed from the grid at a time of low load.

That's why you put your wind turbines where there's almost always at least some level of wind.  Offshore wind turbines look like a very attractive option, from everything I've read.

[Liberator]

Here's something else to think about.

You can't just say, "OK, changing to this power source is a good and wonderful thing."  It HAS to be economically viable.

Also, hydrogen is a red herring.  It takes something like 58% of the energy you get back from burning the hydrogen to crack more hydrogen from water, the most likely source of the copious amounts of hydrogen.

[Kosh]

really i think the best way to deal with any/all nuclear waste is, pending orbital elevator, shoot it at like the sun/moon/something.
ALTHOUGH if there's water on the moon, though, it would not be that good a target

I used to agree, until someone raised the statistical certainty of future accidents during launch or ascent. The consequences of even one such accident involving a spacecraft laden with nuclear waste would be disastrous, to say the least.

I'm not opposed to nuclear power, but the question of what to do with the waste is kind of a huge problem.

With some more R&D I'm willing to bet that waste (spent fuel rods) can be minimized and a safety massively increased.

Waste is a problem that has been solved technically, the problem is politics. It isn't nearly as dangerous as it is made out to be by anti-nuke propaganda.