Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

bill gates is fairly big on (and is heavily pushing) nuclear as well as a logical but frankly unimaginative energy solution. i think he means well but i can't help but think his charity ought to be broken up even more than microsoft.

i dont hate nuclear but i would not put $ on it post-fukushima

didn't they just invent some kind of new reactor that dramatically reduces the half life of nuclear waste

there's always some fantastic new technology that either just happened or is purported to be right around the corner w/ nuclear that would make it safer or a billion times more efficient, problem is the existing plants periodically breaking down in near-apocalyptic ways obliterates any goodwill ito public opinon

didn't they just invesnt some kind of new reactor that's a billion times better than the one they just invented

Won't fiber optic computing be a thing in a few years? I imagine that will cut down drastically on resources used.

If you were looking at a spreadsheet of cost/benefits, I'm going to assume that nuclear is the brightest option on the page because these are all very smart people who have come to that conclusion.
Still, if you have a few billion, why not make a game-changing stab at solar? (which is currently pretty dirty, apparently)

If you were looking at a spreadsheet of cost/benefits, I'm going to assume that nuclear is the brightest option on the page because these are all very smart people who have come to that conclusion.

somewhat surprisingly, the main problem with nuclear (putting aside all the issues with disasters and disposing of the waste, which are huge problems but generally not anything that have dissuaded financiers in the past) is that it's NOT cost-effective to build new nuclear plants. it's one of the most expensive forms of energy, when you consider the startup costs. it only was possible in the past because of huge subsidies. there hasn't been a new nuclear plant built in the U.S. since the 1970s. yes, part of the reason is because of three mile island and chernobyl, but the main reason is that electricity from coal and natural gas is just less expensive to generate. and even clean energy like wind and solar, which once was more expensive than nuclear, is now the less expensive option, and continues to drop in price as technologies develop. nuclear, on the other hand, is just really fucking expensive and will continue to be for the foreseeable future (those Generation IV nuclear reactors that address, in part, waste management problems? yeah, they're really fucking expensive too).

sorry to link to grist yet again, but they do good work: http://grist.org/nuclear/2011-06-04-nuclear-power-is-expensive-and-uninsurable/

there hasn't been a new nuclear plant built in the U.S. since the 1970s.

? Perry Nuclear Power Plant, which I grew up down the street from, came online in 1987.

it only was possible in the past because of huge subsidies.

I think it's kind of inevitable that whatever the least fatal solution to the energy question is, is not going to be short of huge subsidies.

xpost

d'oh, I think the soundbyte I was looking for was "since the 1980s". But looking at this, two nuclear licenses were granted in the 1990s. None since 1996, though.

well given the huge startup costs it's all the more disheartening to see Gates et al tackling that hurdle in favor of nuclear instead of for hydro/solar because it's too boutique for him.

that said, apparently a solar cel currently uses more resources in its creation than it puts back over its lifetime. I can't really find a good source of updated info to see if this equation has changed or is likely to with new tech.

I saw this reported in the LA Times once but it was followed by a retraction a few days later. I doubt this is true. (But have no definitive links either.)

as i understand it, solar requires a huge outlay of costs upfront, but definitely returns value + over lifetime.

this is a really creative business solution for this problem:
http://www.economist.com/node/21548482?zid=313&ah=fe2aac0b11adef572d67aed9273b6e55

wait, that's not even the one i remembered reading about. this is the one:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/solving-solars-biggest-problem-didnt-take-technology-development/263756/

The other thing about nuclear is that our current climate change problems stem from the unintended and, for a long time, unexpected consequences of our fossil fuel use.

Nuclear fuel use already has two massive environmental problems assoviated with it that we DO know about (accidents, and the fact that nobody knows what to do with such long-lasting and toxic waste), so it seems a poor alternative for that reason alone.

pparently a solar cel currently uses more resources in its creation than it puts back over its lifetime

lol @ this ridiculous calculation

i think that calculation is way antiquated at this point

solar is kinda intuitive to me as a source of energy bc it's the fucking sun. that shit is huge.

it's the main reason why we have global warming iirc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jpVtYQIols

by "using more resources" I mean the entire cost of production -- energy, raw materials, extraction of raw materials, manufacturing, and cleanup/disposal of the toxic byproducts. In the same way consumers don't pay for the hidden costs for fossil fuels, buyers of solar currently don't pay similar costs, especially if these are cels produced in china where environmental standards are likely not as strict.

yeah sorry there's just no way that's true

like, the number of variables/assumptions in that purported calculation is bonkers - what unit are we converting all these "resources" to? Dollars? kWh? MMBtu?

for ex.

pick any unit you like as long as both sides are in the same unit. if the idea that assigning a precise cost to something is intractable therefore it shouldn't be attempted, then you might as well throw out carbon release as a cost for fossil fuels.

I just picked one variable of many. you're emphasizing hidden costs, are we gonna account for hidden benefits (avoided energy costs - which are pretty tricky to calculate on their own fwiw, avoided CO2 emissions, benefits of whatever the solar power is being used for, etc.) this is not like a simple apples to apples thing, and I suspect whoever came up with the original soundbyte about this just maybe had ulterior motives.

for some applications, like places with a lot of sun, but no infrastructure, solar's clearly going to win in an apples-to-apples race, but in terms of sustainable energy I don't think it's out of the realm of credibility that solar isn't yet where it needs to be on the resource usage/output balance sheet.

If you just needed one variable, this one seems pretty worrisome on its own:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-05/five-rare-earths-crucial-for-clean-energy-seen-in-short-supply.html

so if a new rare earth mine is dug to build a solar panel that prevents a mountain in Virginia from being fracked how do you quantify that

me, personally? i'd take the fracking issue as independent of the environmental costs of mining because ideally neither should happen, and neither are sustainable. if you don't take the mining costs into consideration, then you couldn't justify investing in some technological advance in solar tech that would minimize or eliminate the need for these costly metals. at a minimum, I'd say you'd saved however many gallons of fuel used by the construction equipment, electricity used in operation, etc...

x-post
I think costs per energy unit should be computed based only on their intrinsic costs. Then the replacement values of one source over the other can be argued. For example, solar works out to be 10% more expensive than coal, *but* it saves Virginia from being fracked to hell so it's a better option.

yeah if you could bake in costs of fracking into natural gas etc... it'd be much easier to make a comparison. there was something interesting in that nuclear article posted upthread about insurance costs for nuclear making it prohibitive in germany. the factoring in of hidden costs seems like a great job for actuaries.

me, personally? i'd take the fracking issue as independent of the environmental costs of mining because ideally neither should happen, and neither are sustainable. if you don't take the mining costs into consideration, then you couldn't justify investing in some technological advance in solar tech that would minimize or eliminate the need for these costly metals. at a minimum, I'd say you'd saved however many gallons of fuel used by the construction equipment, electricity used in operation, etc...

― Philip Nunez, Monday, November 12, 2012 7:01 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Wait what? How are you going to build solar tech without mining...anything?

Isn't the amount of time it takes to get a nuclear reactor up, from application t groundbreaking to supplying electricity, something like 20 years?

IE DARNED GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/11/13/0214240/tapping-shale-reserves-us-would-become-worlds-top-oil-producer-by-2017

When I heard that report testerday all I could think was that handing US oil companies and the US population a huge increase in oil reserves is like giving blasting caps to a teething baby.

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/oilclimategrafv5.jpg

multiple xps:

☻ Other countries like China will follow the French model of certifying one or two reactor designs and mass producing them. The U.S. model in the 70s-80s had regulations incrementally changing over the design and construction phases so most reactors one-off variations with bespoke prices. The "precertified" Gen III reactor designs were made to counter this, but I think they'll mostly be made in China.

☻ Some studies have found that wind power has little effect on carbon emissions. The problems at the moment include the huge upfront emissions from the concrete in footings, and the fact output variability requires complementary "peaking" natural gas plants to shift, rather inefficiently, from stand-by to full-power on a minute to minute basis. This is less of a problem for offshore windfarms.Like most renewable energy, the huge need right now is for utility scale energy storage/battery technology, as the generating technology is pretty efficient.

☻ There's not enough indium or tellurium in the world to wire up the planet with the current CIGS or CdTe solar PV. Utility scale (ie cost effective) solar is IMO largely going to be solar thermal with heliostat mirrors, situated in the Mojave & Sahara. You can also heat up molten sodium (etc.) for fairly efficient power storage with these.

☻ Bill Gates isn't funding the travelling wave reactor design through his philanthropic foundation - its through his investment in Intellectual Ventures and thence TerraPower, which is a top 5 patent holder. I've pretty high hopes for this, as it actually does seem to solve many issues with long-term U235 supplies and the complex mechanics of reactor fueling and waste disposal. Think of these as just large static tubes of unenriched or depleted uranium with big heat exchangers, simmering a hundred feet underground for 50+ years on a single fuel load, when the reaction wave has hit the far end you just fill up the reactor cavity with concrete and forget it (the waste products have shorter half-lives than the current light water reactor fuel cycle). You could situate these pretty much anywhere with with nearby surface water as a heat sink, and low earthquake risk. Its not clear (to outside observers like myself) whether there are external reaction moderators, or if they'll just be engineered so that even in the event of failure of the thermal offtak system the system will simply conduct all waste heat to surrounding bedrock. I for one really hope that the pilot plant (probably Russia or China) works as advertised, as the travelling wave reactor design seems to solve quite a few of the outstanding issues with nuclear.

Correction: Intellectual Ventures is the top-5 patent holder, TerraPower is its spin-off to develop the TWR.

what's the time scale of how long you need to sequester the waste products under the new designs? if it's like 10 years, that would tip me over to the pro-nuke side, but if it's gone from 2 million to 1 million years, i'd still feel like they're falling into a local maxima trap.

This looks interesting

The team used the nanomaterial to build a prototype thermoelectric generator that they hope can eventually produce milliwatts of power.

Making milliwatts from nanotech is cool, but irrelevant to the Big Show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnSi5zWZS0E

^^^^^Obama addressing a climate change question in today's press conference.

i wouldn't be so quick to write off the promise of more efficient solar cells based on carbon nano structures

obama fairly depressing there, admitting it exists, and vowing not to do anything unpopular about it.

Yeah, that was my takeaway. He had very detailed plans in response to so many other questions in that press conference and all he could come up with for climate change is "I'm gonna talk to some people and see what we can do, let me get back to you on that".

"We need to educate the public about the gravity of the situation. I was too busy with other things for four years, and might get to it in the next four."

Slate Staffer Will Oremus:

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