Solar And Wind Energy Are NOT The Answer

[fridjonk]

Thorium nuclear energy is clearly the way to go, India will be going 30% Thorium before 2050. And let's hope more will fallow.

Let's end this scarcity on nuclear energy.  

 

[Cocolove]

Iceland is i think 100% geothermal, which unlike nuclear can't cause radioactive leaks

[fridjonk]

@Cocolove  

"Liquid fluoride thorium reactors are designed to be meltdown proof. A plug at the bottom of the reactor melts in the event of a power failure or if temperatures exceed a set limit, draining the fuel into an underground tank for safe storage. Mining thorium is safer and more efficient than mining uranium."

 

[Leo Gura]

25% of Germany's electricity comes from solar & wind.

[Enizeo]

8 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

25% of Germany's electricity comes from solar & wind.

Yes, but we have to bump up energy production from coal whenever the weather is unfavourable and send energy to France for free when it is more favourable than our networks can handle. Renewables will require innovative ways of storing energy in order to be sustainable.

Additionally, lots of rare bird species die in wind turbines and solar panels will be difficult to recycle. There's still lots of stuff to figure out, even here, but we're getting there.

[Yog]

Its the electricity storage batteries that backfire on the environment, some seemingly clean energy sources may do more harm than good, just because of our electricity storage technology ... that hasn't moved much.

[fridjonk]

@Leo Gura Germany has been called the first renewable energy economy and yet they emit twice as much CO2 as France that gets 80% of it's power from nuclear, and it's twice as expensive. It also requires massive lands be cleared as wind farms only give 2.5 watts per square meter, compared to nuclear's 1000 per square meter. 

I think it would be disastrous to put a ban on nuclear reactors, especially when advancement in 4th gen molten salt reactors is rapidly increasing and waste can be reused as fuel for them multiple times. Combining nuclear and solar would very likely be the best solution. 

[Leo Gura]

@fridjonk You'll sing a different tune when Fukushima happens in your backyard.

I had a client who got cancer from Fukushima. It's ugly stuff.

[Leo Gura]

13 hours ago, Enizeo said:

Renewables will require innovative ways of storing energy in order to be sustainable.

Telsa has already created industrial grade energy storage cells:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/29/20746170/tesla-megapack-battery-pge-storage-announced

The technology is already here and rapidly improving.

With some government subsidies, this problem is very realistic to solve.

Wind is not even necessary. Everything can be solar. Solar is the ultimate energy source because it is virtually unlimited. We just need more cells and batteries, which will naturally happen.

We can install solar panels on every rooftop in the world. This is the future. Solar is only going to get cheaper and more efficient.

Coal and nuclear is already going out of business. With a proper carbon tax, solar will become king.

[outlandish]

Are there any working industrial thorium reactors? Last time I checked in on this it was still an experimental technology. I agree that in principal thorium reactors could be part of the solution. They should be vastly safer than current uranium fission reactors. 

Solar, wind, and other renewables are definitely also part of the solution. We currently already have many gigawatts of power being generated by photovoltaics and wind, on the ground. We have this huge amount of energy being showered upon us from the heavens, we only need to tap a little bit of it to meet the needs of all of humanity.

It's a huge, multi-faceted problem and it won't have one single solution.

We need high-voltage DC transmission lines, more solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric. We probably have to consider more advanced nuclear power sources at this point. 

We need to get off coal, that would be a good start. Maybe there can be "clean coal" but I doubt it.

We also need to look at the under-discussed problem of refrigerants. Refrigerants vented into the atmosphere account for a hugely disproportional part of the GHG problem, and it's hardly talked about. They need to be much more tightly controlled and re-used.

Hopefully some day we achieve the dream of clean, small-scale fusion power.

[fridjonk]

@outlandish There are no active thorium reactors as for now. But its just around the corner, there are many being built as we speak. Main reason they are not building them more rapidly is because of budget restrictions.

But Terra Power and others have been investing heavily into it and it will become a thing in the next decades.

Moving too quickly onto nuclear reactors would not be a wise move. 

I've been looking into thorium reactors disadvantages for the past days and apparently, there are none. 

Edited August 6, 2019 by fridjonk

[Michael569]

This is kinda anecdotal story and not-evidence based but......My grandparents back in my country in eastern Europe live around 5 kilometers from the largest Nuclear power plant in the country. People in this village are extremely ill, many of them have goiters (including my grandma) and old people waste away incredibly fast. The mortality of people above 70 is very rapid....as I said an anecdotal evidence but perhaps the nuclear is not as clean as we think. 

There is a lot of push towards nuclear energy now but something about it rubs me the wrong way. It takes hundreds of yours for the radioactive isotopes to stop emiting particles... People are visiting Chernobyl these days as if it was safe where there is clear demonstration that some of these places will fry your thyroid and testicles in 15 minutes. Their Geiger is clicking like a teenage girl's dildo while they are happily recording their instagram stories. 

On the top of that global installation of 5G and more push towards pharmacology then ever? 

Boy we are getting our arses in some serious trouble! 

[ajasatya]

As crazy as it sounds, our level of engineering is still very rudimentary. You can't make projections for the future without taking huge technology leaps into account.

[TheAlchemist]

The degree to which renewables are a viable choice depends largely on the geographic location and environment. It's not black and white, some areas are going way overboard with the pushing of "green" energy and are counterintuitively causing MORE damage to the environment by doing that. Also some areas are using non-renewable sources when renewable energy could actually be implemented and taken advantage of in quite a short time period.

[fridjonk]

6 hours ago, Shiva said:

New technologies always evolve and get better and better as we innovate.

Yes, green energy and also electric cars have their own problems, but we are now at a point where we have nearly exhausted the potential for innovation for combustion vehicles and nuclear power plants.

There's a lot more room for innovation and improvement in the alternatives, so it makes sense to head in that direction.

100% 

1 hour ago, ajasatya said:

As crazy as it sounds, our level of engineering is still very rudimentary. You can't make projections for the future without taking huge technology leaps into account.

Very true, that's why it would be crazy to put a ban on them like what happened with psychedelics. It will be a big hindrance to the technological advancement in this field. But it definitely needs more advancement before they start pumping them out like hot waffles.

[ajasatya]

@fridjonk Yes, but I was talking particularly about solar/wind energy. Our capacity to use such sources of energy is not very good.

For instance, photovoltaic plates work more poorly as they heat up, which is kind of ridiculous since they're supposed to stay exposed to sunlight.

[fridjonk]

@ajasatya Yes solar and wind energy are definitely only in the beginning stages, and need more advancement in their fields.