deGrasse Tyson & Nye on Climate Change

[SeeGeeWhy]

Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate

So it sounds like he isn't totally against the nuclear option, but would prefer we do as much solar as possible.

Bill disagrees (2:00 mark)
http://www.planetforward.org/idea/ask-bill-nye

So NDT's argument is that solar should be developed because the fuel is free.

The energy density we get out of it is so low that the machines and system requirements make it a decidedly not free source of energy. Levelized life cycle costs are the relevant data points. Gen IV nuclear, in particular molten salt fueled reactors, can be built and operated at costs lower than coal fired power which is currently the least expensive option. The fuel component of an MSR is extremely low so as to be virtually free, because the energy density of the system is very high.

Further, it is portable, scalable and can be used at point of demand. Solar cannot and never will be able to match this. Technology needs high utility if it is going to be widely adopted. This is why we can't get off of oil - it is too damn useful!

As for Nye's argument, I can't disagree. The light water reactor technology we use as civilians today is an unfortunate legacy of an extremely successful project with strict military objectives. It never should have been beached. The point is that there are far better alternatives which are safe. He is keen to state IN the US... Nuclear in the us will forever have a hard time evolving because of the long history and ties to the military; it's backwards regulatory environment; and large influence by public markets - just watch what is happening with B&W's mPower - it has become victim of a play by activist shareholders. How are we to progress as a society when our energy interests are being almost solely guided by short term profit goals?

Originally Posted by photon

Was doing a bit more reading on this and I might be over estimating the need for baseload and/or under estimating the ability for alternatives to provide it... Seems if the grid is smart and capable enough, there are computer simulations for some countries where renewables are capable of providing all the energy without nuclear for baseload.

I would love to read those sources if you could share them.

Originally Posted by Tyler

What about Chinese Thorium reactors?

Chinese thorium reactors are based on US technology. The MSRE, built at oak ridge. The Chinese program went from receiving mega funding, to getting support pulled, to being accelerated in the span of about 15 months. They're also pursuing, despite receiving almost every bit of knowledge from oak ridge and LLNL, very rudimentary designs and I believe are not pursuing a true salt fueled design for their commercial units, instead opting for a salt cooled unit that will use TRISO pellets with thorium blended in them. So... Not really receiving the full benefit of the MSR potential. I believe they are quite far away from deployment despite claims in the media stating otherwise.

My preference is with the Canadian molten salt reactor under development, the Integral Molten Salt Reactor by Terrestrial Energy Inc. http://www.terrestrialenergyinc.com.

Strong team, great technology, success with fundraising to date, practical approach to market, well defined market strategy, and Canada is a country that has a much more favorable regulatory environment to develop and deploy new nuclear technologies. That and there are a few provinces which are actively seeking to do just this (Saskatchewan is the leader in this realm for sure).

Originally Posted by ken0042

Replace nuclear with hydro, and I will agree with you. deGrasse Tyson's point was that the sun produces more than enough power to provide for our electricity needs; even if those needs increased 100 fold. (Which is possible if we switch from gas heat to electric.)

I just don't see why nuclear has to be one of the options. It's a messy solution when cleaner solutions are also available.

Then comes the political aspect. Do we allow North Korea, Iran, etc to have nuclear power? Outside of the odd James Bond movie, I've never heard of a terrorist using hydro or solar as a weapon of mass destruction.

Hydro is extremely impactful and no energy source is truly clean.

MSRs are able to consume the long lived waste you are talking about as fuel because it's fuel can stay in the reactor for much longer than conventional water cooled U-Pu machines can afford. The waste footprint of an MSR is a fraction of a LWR, and it is radiotoxic for a scale of hundreds of years, which is indeed a challenge which can be reasonably met through engineering.

The waste is also not weaponizable to the same degree as LWR spent fuel. Proliferation risk as we know it today is nearly zero with an MSR. Give it to all of the politically unstable nations you want because out of anyone on this planet, it is those countries who are in sore need of highly accessible, safe, clean and low cost energy to improve their standard of living.

Furthermore, the fear of radiation is not all it is cracked out to be. The Linear No Threshold (LNT) has been proven to be incorrect, meaning that low doses of radiation exposure do not have a cumulative impact on the body and it does not increase health risks - intact the opposite appears to be true.

Read Dr. Robert Hargraves essay on radiation risk (http://atomicinsightscom.c.presscdn....y26SixPage.pdf) or Dr. Wade Allison's work on "radiation and reason" http://www.radiationandreason.com/ for more.

[SeeGeeWhy]

Oh, I should add that nuclear power is pretty much the only source of energy we know that can work for us in the absence of a sun. I think that's pretty important for us to have a damn good understanding about, for many many reasons.

Our planet derives about 80% of its geothermal energy from natural nuclear reactions occurring within the core and mantle. Our home is one giant natural nuclear reactor, I see that as a good reason to embrace it

[Flash Walken]

Seegee, really like your contributions to this thread.

The problem that I see, though, is that solar doesn't have to come at the expense of nuclear, and it's use shouldn't be through comparisons to contemporary solar technology.

Why can't you have a nuclear plant surrounded by solar cells? Why can't we use nuclear for a base load and attempt to have as many different renewable power sources feeding into that grid as well? Especially in north america, harness the residential sprawl and ease the collective draw from base loads.

Ken0042 is a great example of it in this thread. He wants to invest the cost himself to do this but is unable to because of regulatory control. The government should be assisting here instead of hampering.

[SeeGeeWhy]

Flash, I think that distributed grids supplied by renewables and backed by small scale nuclear is definitely the way of the future they're a great compliment to one another.

[photon]

Originally Posted by SeeGeeWhy

I would love to read those sources if you could share them.

Beyond a general "solar as baseload" type search for lots of articles, I can't find the specific paper I had read.

This was the closest I could find http://theconversation.com/renewable...heres-how-2221

I'll keep checking. The gist of it was that baseload isn't a thing about the plants themselves, but a statistical attribute of the plants and grid together. It did have a baseload in a way from less variable sources, and the question I still had was how much extra generation capacity vs demand is needed.

[SeeGeeWhy]

One concept I have read about is having a smart, ultra connected grid, which would allow the system to capture solar power across a wide longitudinal band to continue supporting demand to an area long after it has gone dark... For instance, SW US sun feeding dusk time east coast demand; Spainish sun supplying Ukraine, etc. obviously this might be difficult to roll out at first given moving power in that scale across borders, but there is precedent for such things and we do have very large grids already constructed. But you can see when looking at feasible plans for renewables, they require scale like this; or as flash mentioned, coupling with more reliable generation. Currently has and coal fired plants are built to supplement large non-urban solar and wind installations - kind of defeats the purpose... But I suppose change is slow.

[photon]

The other stuff my browser history is telling me I looked at:

http://www.science.unsw.edu.au/news/...be-competitive
http://www.energyscience.org.au/BP16%20BaseLoad.pdf
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/the-...wer-is-doomed/
http://www.skepticalscience.com/rene...r-advanced.htm

I still don't see the one graph I know I looked at where it showed an area chart with the different renewables in the US currently and where they'd need to be.

Nuclear just seems such a good solution even now, and could be a much better solution with better technology.

[ken0042]

Looks like solar may not be the way to go after all:

Solar Panels Drain the Sun’s Energy, Experts Say

Scientists at the Wyoming Institute of Technology, a privately-owned think tank located in Cheyenne, Wyoming, discovered that energy radiated from the sun isn’t merely captured in solar panels, but that energy is directly physically drawn from the sun by those panels, in a process they refer to as “forced photovoltaic drainage.” - See more at: http://nationalreport.net/solar-panels-drain-suns-energy-experts-say/#sthash.MNXmJOqO.dpuf

[Ashartus]

Originally Posted by ken0042

Looks like solar may not be the way to go after all:

Solar Panels Drain the Sun’s Energy, Experts Say

Scientists at the Wyoming Institute of Technology, a privately-owned think tank located in Cheyenne, Wyoming, discovered that energy radiated from the sun isn’t merely captured in solar panels, but that energy is directly physically drawn from the sun by those panels, in a process they refer to as “forced photovoltaic drainage.” - See more at: http://nationalreport.net/solar-panels-drain-suns-energy-experts-say/#sthash.MNXmJOqO.dpuf

Also on that site - Obama is running for a 3rd term and also implanting everyone with RFID chips, with the support of the pope.

[troutman]

The Herald is allowing The Friends of Science to provide much comic relief in the letters section recently:

http://www.calgaryherald.com/technol...139/story.html

Warming stopped naturally before Kyoto was ever implemented.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/life/Un...134/story.html

Len Maier, president of Friends of Science, has written of a very curious incident concerning scientific consensus on the subject of global warming. He tells of an unnamed professor from an unnamed U.S. university who sent a questionnaire to 10,257 American earth scientists asking them to state if they believe that climate is warming and if humans are the cause.

Only 3,146 even bothered to respond, and of these, our unnamed professor "disqualified" all but 77. Seventy-five respondents said yes. This, Maier concludes, proves that only 75 of 10,275 of these scientists believe in global warming. What it actually proves is that Maier, although a friend of science, has not had any scientific methodology rub off on him.

[photon]

Originally Posted by ken0042

Looks like solar may not be the way to go after all:

Solar Panels Drain the Sun’s Energy, Experts Say

Scientists at the Wyoming Institute of Technology, a privately-owned think tank located in Cheyenne, Wyoming, discovered that energy radiated from the sun isn’t merely captured in solar panels, but that energy is directly physically drawn from the sun by those panels, in a process they refer to as “forced photovoltaic drainage.” - See more at: http://nationalreport.net/solar-panels-drain-suns-energy-experts-say/#sthash.MNXmJOqO.dpuf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Report

National Report (nationalreport.net) is a satirical website devoted to often subtle parodies of real news which convince the unwary; a situation sometimes referred to as Poe's law.

EDIT: I'm laughing with you, I did notice the green

[ernie]

My company supplies into the nuclear power industry so I have my biases.

Right now everything is all sunshine and lollipops in Germany. But soon if the industry rumblings are correct the decisions they have made will start to come home to roost. Their true energy prices are going ever upward and it is forcing long standing German companies to switch gears on where they will expand to in the future. And these are companies important not just to the economy but the very German identity.

[troutman]

Canadian Weather Forecasters Forbidden From Discussing Climate Change

http://www.iflscience.com/environmen...climate-change

Weather forecasters employed by the Canadian Meteorological Service have been banned from publicly discussing climate change. The decision has been justified on the basis that years of study of meteorology does not make a person qualified to discuss climatic events longer than a few months.

[Devils'Advocate]

Further to that:
http://mikedesouza.com/2014/05/27/st...onment-canada/

“I’m probably quitting. Harper wins.” – Federal scientist in Canada

And:

[photon]

Haha nice visualization.

[Baxter Renegade]

There's only one reason why we aren't utilizing better, cleaner, more efficient sources of energy... The economy.

Way too many folks make way too much money off our current energy utilization. The economy is like a big ol' locomotive... It has so much momentum that it's impossible to immediately stop. Unfortunately most of the money made is off of humanity's most basic needs... Shelter, food, sex, entertainment, energy requirements... We need a resource based economy and we need it soon.

/hippy thoughts

[photon]

Oh and regarding science and the current government, was browsing this the other day.

http://scienceblogs.com/confessions/...al-indictment/

[Thor]

That is really depressing.

[Tinordi]

Better keep voting for the Conservatives because something or other, those other guys... they don't have our best interests at heart!

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Better keep voting for the Conservatives because something or other, those other guys... they don't have our best interests at heart!

Come on, get it right. The other guys are in over their heads. They take their clothes off at charity events and smoke pot and stuff.