Best Source of Energy

Off-topic talk on music, art, literature, games and forum games.

What energy source(s) should humanity invest in?

Coal
2
4%
Oil
1
2%
Natural Gas
3
7%
Biofuel
4
9%
Solar
7
15%
Wind
5
11%
Hydro
9
20%
Nuclear
13
28%
Other
2
4%
 
Total votes: 46

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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Best Source of Energy

Post by brimstoneSalad »

EquALLity wrote: The first 'negative' aspect was the thermal pollution, so I mentioned the cooling towers. According to her, they cool up some of the water, but not all of it, so it's still a problem? :?
That sounds like bullshit.
Yeah, I've never heard that. She pulled that out of her ass to confirm her dogma of nuclear = bad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooling_tower
A cooling tower is a heat rejection device which rejects waste heat to the atmosphere through the cooling of a water stream to a lower temperature. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to remove process heat and cool the working fluid to near the wet-bulb air temperature or, in the case of closed circuit dry cooling towers, rely solely on air to cool the working fluid to near the dry-bulb air temperature.
Congratulations, you're now smarter than your science teacher. It's a realization that's potentially very disappointing.
EquALLity wrote: The second was the disposal issue. She said that we haven't found a way to safely store it, which also sounds like BS, but I don't really know much about that. She said something about how nuclear waste was being stored somewhere and the 'concrete broke'? So it leaked I guess?
Stuff breaks down, but it's not that hard to safely store wastes. What leak is she talking about?
I found this about a recent one: http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/nwp/sections/tankwaste/closure/pages/tank_leak_FAQ.html
Really not that big of a deal, it was easily detected and it's being dealt with. It won't affect anybody.
EquALLity wrote:Then she said that nuclear energy isn't clean energy. :roll:
It's pretty bizarre how anti-science my science teacher is. :P

I think I'm going to email her the documentary after I watch it later.
She'll probably say it's just a propaganda piece. :roll:
Political dogma is just as irrational as religion, sometimes even harder to overcome.
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EquALLity
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Re: Best Source of Energy

Post by EquALLity »

brimstoneSalad wrote:Yeah, I've never heard that. She pulled that out of her ass to confirm her dogma of nuclear = bad.
That's what I figured.
brimstoneSalad wrote:Congratulations, you're now smarter than your science teacher. It's a realization that's potentially very disappointing.
Haha. She's pretty smart, though. Just not so open-minded, apparently.
brimstoneSalad wrote:Stuff breaks down, but it's not that hard to safely store wastes. What leak is she talking about?
I found this about a recent one: http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/nwp/sect ... k_FAQ.html
Really not that big of a deal, it was easily detected and it's being dealt with. It won't affect anybody.
I'm not sure, she wasn't really specific.
Do you know of any that were considered a big deal in the media?

She also mentioned Chernobyl.
brimstoneSalad wrote:She'll probably say it's just a propaganda piece. :roll:
Political dogma is just as irrational as religion, sometimes even harder to overcome.
It's worth a shot.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Best Source of Energy

Post by brimstoneSalad »

EquALLity wrote: I'm not sure, she wasn't really specific.
Do you know of any that were considered a big deal in the media?
Only that one I linked you to. People are calling it America's Chernobyl. :roll:
It's going to take something like ten years for the waste to reach the ground water and have a chance of being used for irrigation or anything.

I think it happened because the containment was very old, and it was using an older standard which is no longer used. None the less, it was detected, and it's being dealt with. It's also a very small amount of actual radioactivity as far as I can tell.

I can try to work out an estimate of how many bananas worth it is.
EquALLity wrote: She also mentioned Chernobyl.
I think that's covered in the documentary. We know why and how Chernobyl happened, and it couldn't happen with any other reactor designs.
It also wasn't such a big deal as people report.

Did you watch the documentary yet?
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Re: Best Source of Energy

Post by EquALLity »

brimstoneSalad wrote:I can try to work out an estimate of how many bananas worth it is.
Bananas are radioactive? :lol:
brimstoneSalad wrote:Did you watch the documentary yet?
I'm watching it now. The people involved don't seem to be scientists, though. What's the situation there in terms of credibility?
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miniboes
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Re: Best Source of Energy

Post by miniboes »

What do you think of this video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nabM5MGq_NY

Is it possible for solar energy to become cheaper than nuclear with technological advances? How much cheaper does it have to be for solar to be the superior option?

What are good sources of information on the various forms of energy? Pandora's Promise was a good starting point, but I feel my knowledge is strongly lacking. I want to learn all about the pros and cons of solar, wind, nuclear, hydro, thermal etc. I prefer lectures and books, but am open to anything.

"Sustainable energy without the hot air" seems like a very informative and unbiased book. It seems like it's not antinuclear. The entire book is available online for free. I'll start reading that as a start.
http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_161.shtml
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._C._MacKay

Another book I'm considering to pick up is "Energy Energy for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines". This book is also written by a physicist. It seems like it's meant for people like me; people in the political and policy sphere with no background in natural sciences.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_A._Muller
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Best Source of Energy

Post by brimstoneSalad »

miniboes wrote:What do you think of this video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nabM5MGq_NY
I don't think much of it. Pop science, lots of inaccuracies and mistakes.

There is a maximum efficiency for solar panels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell_efficiency

46% is the current world record, and 68.7% is the maximum (which in practice we will never reach).
We can't improve efficiency much more. Solar will always take up a substantial amount of land to produce significant amounts of energy.
It may be fine for household use, but for industry it's a stretch. You also have to consider the value of the land itself, now occupied by solar. We can talk about putting solar on buildings, but then you have to consider the value of the windows you've lost.

Price will drop, but the materials needed themselves have thermodynamic limits for processing, and energy is required to do so.
EROEI is an important number to remember, and the time required to get it back and the price of the system (it's not an investment with great returns).

The biggest problem is night time power usage. When you start factoring in the battery systems, solar becomes more expensive and more energy intensive. There's more energy loss. The batteries take energy to manufacture, and they also have limited lifespans.

We need a variable power source to fill in the gap for grid power when the sun isn't shining, and we need industrial power. The best source for this is nuclear.

The only viable option would be if we have cheap room temperature superconductors, and we could pipe energy around the world. Then we could solar farm in the desert, and send it by energy pipeline around the Earth.
But we don't have them, and they may or may not even be possible.
miniboes wrote:Is it possible for solar energy to become cheaper than nuclear with technological advances? How much cheaper does it have to be for solar to be the superior option?
It takes up room and light. The only way it'll be superior is if we have room temperature superconductors so we can solar farm where nobody wants to live or work to generate huge amounts of energy and then transfer it long distance (and I mean to the other side of the Earth, from day to night, and piping it around from sunny places to cloudy places).
miniboes wrote:What are good sources of information on the various forms of energy? Pandora's Promise was a good starting point, but I feel my knowledge is strongly lacking. I want to learn all about the pros and cons of solar, wind, nuclear, hydro, thermal etc. I prefer lectures and books, but am open to anything.
If you want to get deeper into it, that will take some work.
Take a class in electrical engineering. Learn how motors and generators and batteries work. Study chemistry.
There are some online sources in some of these things from universities that put their materials up for free.

Understanding solar means understanding thermodynamics, and energy storage and transmission (which are the big problems).
For home use in a warm sunny place, solar is great. It's just very limited.
miniboes wrote:"Sustainable energy without the hot air" seems like a very informative and unbiased book. It seems like it's not antinuclear. The entire book is available online for free. I'll start reading that as a start.
Another book I'm considering to pick up is "Energy Energy for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines". This book is also written by a physicist. It seems like it's meant for people like me; people in the political and policy sphere with no background in natural sciences.
Those may be good starts. But if you really want to understand the issue intimately, you'll have to have a better grasp on the science itself. Maybe once you read those, you'll have some good leads.
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Re: Best Source of Energy

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brimstoneSalad wrote:Take a class in electrical engineering. Learn how motors and generators and batteries work. Study chemistry.
There are some online sources in some of these things from universities that put their materials up for free.

[...]

Those may be good starts. But if you really want to understand the issue intimately, you'll have to have a better grasp on the science itself. Maybe once you read those, you'll have some good leads.
I've been reading SEWTHA (Sustainable Energy with the Hot Air), and I must say it's the single most interesting book I've picked up in at least five years. I suddenly understand what you're saying about efficiency much better, too. The book serves as a guide to making energy calculations for different kinds of sustainable energy. I know how to calculate things like how much the entire area of the Netherlands could produce in wind energy now. Science is awesome.

It really motivates me to do the things you mentioned. If I get rejected for the university (which means I would stay at the vocational university I'm studying now) I will certainly take physics and chemistry classes in my free time. If I do go to a new university I'll have to see if I have the time.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Best Source of Energy

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miniboes wrote:The book serves as a guide to making energy calculations for different kinds of sustainable energy. I know how to calculate things like how much the entire area of the Netherlands could produce in wind energy now. Science is awesome.
That's great! Make sure to look up up-to-date figures on the internet. This stuff can change over time based on new information and technology. Even a five year old number may be unreliable.
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Re: Best Source of Energy

Post by miniboes »

brimstoneSalad wrote:
miniboes wrote:The book serves as a guide to making energy calculations for different kinds of sustainable energy. I know how to calculate things like how much the entire area of the Netherlands could produce in wind energy now. Science is awesome.
That's great! Make sure to look up up-to-date figures on the internet. This stuff can change over time based on new information and technology. Even a five year old number may be unreliable.
For sure. The book deliberately uses inaccurate numbers (by rounding them), and is mainly concerned with showing how the math should be done.
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Re: Best Source of Energy

Post by miniboes »

Woa, so apparently the average European consumes 125 kWh per day, and the average American (as in, US, not the continent) consumes 250 kWh per day. That's crazy.

Well, that's the numbers from the book. I checked it online (wikipedia though; I know, bad research). In 2009 the average american consumed 224 kWh/d, and the average Brit in 2014 95 kWh/d. That's even worse, but maybe consumption is lower now than it was in 2009? Then the 2:1 ratio probably holds up. Still crazy.
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