[MP-Ryan]

I understand why people like nuclear, but nuclear power needs an exhaustible fuel source. How common is uranium? Is there going to be a peak uranium?

You and I live in Canada.  The Canadian Shield is loaded with uranium.  If our governments built nuclear plants today in key areas of the country - literally atop uranium mines, in some places - we wouldn't have to build another coal-fired station, solar panel, or wind farm for the forseeable future.  Between hydroelectric and nuclear potential, Canada could abandon fossil fuels for electrical power tomorrow if our governments had any balls and planning foresight with infrastructure dollars.

[The E]

Yup. I am all for conserving the environment, and I am also pro nuclear, since modern nuclear reactors are among the safest, most efficient energy producers available.

[MP-Ryan]

Yup. I am all for conserving the environment, and I am also pro nuclear, since modern nuclear reactors are among the safest, most efficient energy producers available.

Indeed.  I have a couple "save-the-planet!"-type co-workers who rant at me because I hate the focus on solar and wind, yet when I point out how safe, efficient, and sustainable nuclear power is all I hear is crickets.

[The E]

I shudder to think how much progress we could have made if research into new reactor designs hadn't been effectively stopped two or three decades ago.

[Al-Rik]

Photovoltaic Energy will improve the life of many in country's without reliable electrical grid.
Nations like India for example there the rich now use a diesel or gas operated generator to power up their electrical light, TVs or refrigerators.

But in industrialized nations with a working nation wide electrical grid...   it has interesting effects.
During the last few years a lot of new photovoltaic plants have been connected to the German grid.
At noon they produce a lot of electricity, so that the price for the electricity falls down to zero on the spot market.
But the owners of the solar plants get a granted price for each kWh, if it is needed or not.  The difference is paid by the end consumer.

The big producers of electrical energy (mostly owned by Towns, Countys and States ) shut of their gas plants during noon and put 'em on again during the night.
So their gas plants run only a few ours, but have to be maintained the whole day, and spoiling the company s profit.

From a technical point of view the whole technology is interesting.
It's not needed to use the highest quality of silicon for solar cells, so there is no effect on the price for ICs.
But the chemistry is demanding. For example: silicon is usually etched with Hydroflouric Acid. Handling that stuff isn't without risk for the workers and the environment - what's the unknown side of  "green" energy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrofluoric_acid

Some alternative cells are based on alloys of Copper and or Germanium... and partners like Arsen, Selen or Tellur. Most of the chemical compounds of these elements are toxic.

[Thaeris]

Perhaps the environmentally friendly solution is to have all the politicians that inhibit our nuclear technology (or otherwise screw us over) turn hand-generators for 16 hours a day?

[perihelion]

I shudder to think how much progress we could have made if research into new reactor designs hadn't been effectively stopped two or three decades ago.

What more research is needed!?  Gen IV test reactors of half a dozen types have been built and tested.  They worked.  It is time to build the damn things, but I'm sure Klaus will tell you all about the regulatory bull**** that makes that a near impossibility.

[caveat] I'm not actually suggesting that research into newer and better reactor designs isn't a fabulously good thing we ought to be doing.  I just wish we'd use the knowledge we've already obtained rather than sitting on it and doing nothing.[/caveat]

[MarkN]

Why do people always assume that solar=photovoltaic?
thermal tower technology has been proved at much larger scales, and some of the plant being planned now are of the same power output as the smaller conventional power stations (100-200MW). Their more interesting features include being able to store power in the workings of the plant itself, to the extent of storing around 1/3rd of the the power they produce, and then releasing that power during the night. Of course, they still rely on clear skies, which is  major disadvantage.

[MP-Ryan]

Why do people always assume that solar=photovoltaic?
thermal tower technology has been proved at much larger scales, and some of the plant being planned now are of the same power output as the smaller conventional power stations (100-200MW). Their more interesting features include being able to store power in the workings of the plant itself, to the extent of storing around 1/3rd of the the power they produce, and then releasing that power during the night. Of course, they still rely on clear skies, which is  major disadvantage.

They're even more climate-dependent than traditional photovoltaics.  Mirrors are subject to major scouring, and ambient temperature poses a problem (either because cooling is necessary, or because of thermal inefficiency due to loss).  Not saying they're a bad idea, but they aren't nearly as practical as nuclear for wide-scale industrial electrical supply.

[Luis Dias]

Nuclear is not practical because humans are an irrational paranoid bunch.

[Mongoose]

Perhaps the environmentally friendly solution is to have all the politicians that inhibit our nuclear technology (or otherwise screw us over) turn hand-generators for 16 hours a day?

I'd think their hot air alone could drive a turbine.

[lostllama]

There's No Tomorrow

I posted about this last year in another energy-related thread. For relevance to this particular topic, I'd recommend watching from 07:14 to 17:15 as it's a good primer on the current state of alternative energy resources (however, this film was released about a year ago). Then again, I think most people in this thread probably know about all this stuff already. Still, the whole film is worth watching as I think it's a good overall summary of the situation.

Some of you may find fault with some of its claims, though - for example there's really nothing positive said about fusion, just that it faces massive engineering challenges; in fact it almost seems to dismiss it completely. Personally I hope that the ITER Project and others like it can contribute towards enabling fusion power to be made viable, preferably before the full extant of the damage of fossil fuel consumption is realized.

[Qent]

Well... that was depressing. We need more planets.

[Luis Dias]

There's No Tomorrow

I posted about this last year in another energy-related thread. For relevance to this particular topic, I'd recommend watching from 07:14 to 17:15 as it's a good primer on the current state of alternative energy resources (however, this film was released about a year ago). Then again, I think most people in this thread probably know about all this stuff already. Still, the whole film is worth watching as I think it's a good overall summary of the situation.

Some of you may find fault with some of its claims, though - for example there's really nothing positive said about fusion, just that it faces massive engineering challenges; in fact it almost seems to dismiss it completely. Personally I hope that the ITER Project and others like it can contribute towards enabling fusion power to be made viable, preferably before the full extant of the damage of fossil fuel consumption is realized.

Oh noes, more Peak Oil stuff. Apparently, a movement whose predictions of global oil production peak have been failing for 40 years in a row still seem to find the courage to condescendingly inform us that the end is nigh.

The irony is that the figures of the video are mostly correct, albeit extremely biased in the interpretation of it. There are a wide number of claims about how difficult a certain task is, or how the economy works (oh boy they make so many econ mistakes throughout the video), or how discovery works that are just untrue or skewed to the video's agenda. The video is, however very funny, in the sense that it voices perfectly all the talking points of the crazy people like Simmons, Kunstler, etc. By the 9 minute mark I was already listing in my head the talking points that were in the queue and boy did the video produce them! Even the silly dependance on the categorization of new energy fuel as "unconventional" just to show that the old "conventional" is gone was argued.

Then at the 12 minute mark, I said "wait, this isn't even listing mainstream peak oil arguments, this is outright LATOC material". Yeah, that bad.

By 17 min mark, we are taught that growth is impossible because things are finite, and because growth is exponential we are doomed. Then it goes on to educate on how "exponential" is a nightmarish concept. Then they "educate" on the nature of how the banks "create" money and how "growth" is mandated on how the world economy is architected (LOLWOOOOT). Oh, and did you know that exponentials are bad? Let me tell you again... *sigh*

Anyone that considers the video's arguments somewhat interesting and scary or something, I'd advise to not panic, and check out independent historical sources of the "Limits to Growth" movement, and what the critics of it have and had to say. As a general wide criticism, I'd just say that the video merely lists some problems and some other pseudo-problems that we have been facing for the last 40 years. It does not provide the other side, how many of these barriers have been solved, how many *other* nightmare problems have been easily solved, or were just way overhyped (Erlich, the main voice of the "Limits to Growth" think tank "predicted", using the same kind of mathematical arguments that this video uses that in the year 2000 the USA would have less 50 million americans due to death by famine, yeah). It doesn't understand the manner in which we have been solving these issues (it assumes we would have all to be perfectly synchronized by a world government perfect and corruptless), etc., etc.

But, I am wasting my english. Just look at the picture below and then facepalm at the reality of so many people "stressed" about some kind of peak energy:





PS: Just to inform that these kinds of "arguments" about peak oil usually make one of the biggest mistakes, which is to say that the "discovery" of oil peaked a long time ago. This is statistical shenanigan. What is true is that while the discoveries of the fields per se peaked a long time ago, the reserves of available oil have not. Many discoveries within the already discovered fields never stopped happening and new technologies make what once were unavailable spots now easy to drill. Funny fact: The world oil reserves have never been so big as of today. See here:

[Nuke]

kitty!

[lostllama]

Thanks for your informative views on this Luis. Originally my only real concern about the film was about how it seems to dismiss most alternative energy sources, with no consideration given to how further research may make them viable in the future. But now you've provided me with more to think about. I used to regularly follow Idleworm's blog (that's the film's animator's handle, this is his current website; his old one had more of a doomerist nature) and I might have focused too much on some of the more pessimistic sentiments on future energy availability.

I don't really envisage a scenario in which peak oil effectively means "zero petroleum available, end of the world, therefore end of story"; I see it more as a gradual realization of the decline of the profitability of extracting oil as the process becomes more expensive. There will still be oil there for those that can afford it, but there may be a slow revolution of sorts, in which society switches to cheaper hydrocarbons and alternative energy sources for their needs.

I suppose the "We're on a finite planet with finite space for growth potential, hence exponential growth = bad" argument presented in the film is perhaps not quite fully thought through enough, if population trends are anything to go by. By reducing poverty in developing nations (where the overall birth rate is still high but apparently projected to start to slow down somewhat within the next 2 or so decades) it would be expected that birth rates would decline, reducing energy demand as a result.

At the end of the day I feel that, due to climate change, our current way of life in this apparent "golden age" we ("we" being those that can afford a consumer lifestyle/live in a developed nation) live in may have to be abandoned to some extent in the future. Sustaining it in the long term may turn out to be only viable for a privileged few. Being less wasteful in our energy expenditure now would help in prolonging the availability of more easily extractable oil resources for later generations and in reducing CO₂ emissions, perhaps hopefully long enough for a cleaner energy source to become mainstream. That's easier said than done however.

(Actually, although I admit this isn't much of an effort on my part, I've developed a habit of switching every electrical appliance in the house that has a "standby" function off at the mains supply. Even my monitor usually gets switched off if I need to leave the computer for a moment, despite having a blank screensaver (kind of daft, I know)).

[Nuke]

during the holocaust the nazis disposed of bodies using bodies as fuel to burn other bodies. what i think we should do is kind of like that, except instead we hook up a boiler and turbines to the whole thing and use the heat from burning people to generate electricity. of course to make the plant as efficient as possible we will throw the bodies in alive, to save the expense of killing them. such a method of power generation also has the side effect of reducing power demands the longer its used. as for who gets thrown in first, i say we nominate all the anti-nuclear peeps that wouldn't let us build new nuclear reactors and have kept nuclear research in the gutter for the last 40 years. after we run out of them, then we can hold a vote to see if everyone would rather continue using the murder mills, or switch to nuclear energy.

[Killer Whale]

I'm suddenly not so anti-nuclear for some reason.

[lostllama]

Does Kusanagi still have that van-cum-partially-solar-powered-living-space setup? I admire his work on that, and wish I had the skills to do something similar. Whether I could tolerate the living conditions would be another matter.

[Luis Dias]

lostllama, yeah that's mostly what I think. The Peak Oil rabbit hole is very deep, and it is easy to get somewhat scared by it if you only pay attention to the pessimists, usually dwelling sites like The Oil Drum and so on. Back in 2006, I got a scare out of it. But then very shortly thereafter a blog named "PeakOilDebunked" (you can google it) started to make me see the cracks. And then I noticed the cracks where everywhere in the narrative.

Curiously enough, a very similar process happened when I started reviewing the most alarming narrative about global warming. The cracks are subtler and the criticism is also subtler and reasonable than the polarized webgannigans would have you believe. Not that it isn't a problem, but I am now way less worried about it.