6 ms·

Methane is a much more potent (up to 100x) greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide [1] and previously unknown methane leaks could greatly undermining our current und

by devy 8y ago

Methane is a much more potent (up to 100x) greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide [1] and previously unknown methane leaks could greatly undermining our current understanding of the carbon footprint of methane. While I do think other renewable energy sources (solar/wind/geothermo) are the true safer source for mankind's long term continuity, I don't think we can achieve carbon neutral without Nuclear. If we discourage nuclear, it might not even matter in the carbon neutral in 50 years as climate change could potentially wipe a lot of us out on mother earth as it's currently enroute to a irreversible disastrous future. [1] https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/issues/natural-gas/ https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/issues/natural...

gwbas1c 8y ago
> All the while, nuclear is falling further behind renewable solar and wind power. As Schneider notes, the 3.3 GW of new nuclear capacity connected to the grid worldwide in 2017 (including three in China and a fourth in Pakistan built by Chinese firms) pales in comparison to the 53 GW of solar power installed in China alone. Somehow I don't think nuclear has any chance of coming back. The tone of the article is that no one can figure out how to build them. By the time we have lots of nuclear plants, we'll have even more cheap solar panels and cheap batteries.
- devy 8y ago
  > By the time we have lots of nuclear plants, we'll have even more cheap solar panels and cheap batteries. Probably true, for the better. But we shouldn't shut down all the existing nuclear plants prematurely simply we fear a meltdown. Newer design are MUCH safer and Fukushima type meltdown is much less possible. Don't forget, the weather dependent, and high peak output during daytime but zero output at night time nature of the solar is still unresolved until mass grid-scale battery or some sort of energy storage device is deployed ubiquitous into our power infrastructure. That's gonna take forever. We haven't found another truly safe and renewable yet mass-scale energy source yet - nuclear is one right now. Don't abandon it before we find a reliable replacement.
  - another-one-off 8y ago
    I'm just going off the wiki articles [1] and some random articles [eg, 2], but given the rarity of 'Fukushima type meltdowns' I'm still confused about why people are worried about them. Flooding and violent storms are much more dangerous. Fukushima's meltdown doesn't appear to have posed (or be posing) any particular threat to humans, given the drought of observable impacts. That said, I'm starting to understand that the risk is to farmland (although I am /extremely suspicious/ that most of the people who don't like nuclear haven't figured that out). Given how hysteric the response is to radiation risk, I'd really like to see a trustworthy source describe how and why the legal limits are set to what they are - maybe one day I will. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_effects_from_the_Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_effects_from_the_Fuk... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35761136 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35761136
    - DoctorOetker 8y ago
      From a cognitive/psychological/understanding perspective: Fundamentally the reason it is hard for average citizens to understand the dangers of radioactive materials, is because humans are pretty bad at understanding huge numbers, similar to how we are poor at dealing with low probabilities. The big number in question is avogadro's number. A tiny speck of material contains huge amounts of nuclei. A single nuclear disintegration (after being say ingested) can cause mutations in multiple ways (chemically by daughter nucleus and alpha particle, compton effect knocking an electron away, beta particle ionization, ...). for a given level of enrichment in a radioactive material, the number of fissionable nuclei is proportional to Avogadro's constant, it's pretty hard to fathom the number of future disintegrations. Another way in which the paramount requirement that these materials not mix with our environment is hard to visualize is again Avogadro's number: once mixed into the environment it becomes very hard, to unmix them, again because of the sheer number of nuclei in even small samples of normal matter. Then there is also of course our poor intuition with low probability events, and that any unforseen rate/probability that is greater than the sum of all rates/probabilities of all known failure mechanisms would easily dwarf this sum of known failure probabilities, since we engineer the known ones to be as small as possible. Just today I read in the local paper that our nuclear reactors apparently weren't built to specification, and the steel in the reinforced concrete is degrading, and would not withstand many events (like a plane crashing into the reactor) There is a known example of a hijacked plane, where the perpetrators threatened to crash into an experimental nuclear reactor. Cryptocurrencies did not exist yet so they were forced to land in order to receive their demands, today they would not have to... The legal limits are defined in terms of natural background radiation.
- patrickg_zill 8y ago
  1. China bought 4x nuclear plants from Westinghouse. It was clear to everyone involved that China was going to clone their design. Everything had to be built with Chinese labor and engineers and the entire blueprints were handed over to the Chinese. After those 4 are built, China will build as many as they want themselves, likely royalty-free. 2. the 3.3Gw is 24x7 minus downtime/maintenance. The 53GW is less than 12h/day, depending on how it is installed it may well be far less than 12h/day of peak output. So likelier to be ~ 12-18Gw on a continuous basis given night time, cloud cover, rain, efficiency losses, etc. I agree the solar is still significant but it is less than the raw numbers make it appear.
  - jabl 8y ago
    1. For the near future, it seems China is planning to build lots of their own designs (which AFAIU are improved versions of previous generation French designs (not EPR)). https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/07/03/russia-and-china-consolidate-new-nuclear-around-standardized-water-cooled-designs/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/07/03... 2. Some quick duckduckgo'ing suggests average capacity factor of Chinese utility solar is around 15%. (Really good locations like SW USA can reach up to 27%) . With a capacity factor of 90% for nukes, it's 3 GW nukes and 8 GW solar.
king_nothing 8y ago
Methane gun hypothesis (ie ESAS) is a real concern. Nuclear maybe necessary to drive carbon sequestration and complement other power gen.
- nyolfen 8y ago
  clathrate gun is the pascal’s wager of climate change
mercutio2 8y ago
Methane is a potent GHG, but its residency time in the atmosphere is on the order of one quarter as long as CO2. So in terms of our ability to adjust future climate forcings, releasing lots of methane in the short term and observing the many negative effects in the near future seems much better to me than releasing lots of CO2 and seeing the cumulative effects of those CO2 emission grow more slowly but last longer. I think humans tend to deal better with quickly emerging crises than slow ones, so I’d much rather have a methane ecosystem we see problems with than exchange it for an equal forcing amount of CO2. Of course, we can and should pursue CO2 reductions and fix accidental CH4 emissions at the same time.
- simonh 8y ago
  Many of the problems caused by warming would effectively be permanent though. Melted ice caps wont reform any time soon, especially since when they stop reflecting sunlight, the Albedo change alone will kick in even more warming. It could also take thousands of years to melt the tundra, slowly releasing vast quantities of methane, so even though individual molecules break down they will get replenished constantly over a long period. Finally the biggest sink of methane in the atmosphere is the hydroxyl reaction in the troposphere which - generates carbon dioxide.
  - mercutio2 8y ago
    Excellent points, all! Certainly the hydroxyl reaction leaves behind CO2, but much less of it than an equivalent forcing of plain CO2, is my point. I still tend to think investing in cheap CH4 plants and pipelines is better than investing in coal, but I’ll happily concede the point that increased radiative forcings from any source have non-reversible effects, and we should be pricing in those externalities as soon as we can. The sooner we can get a (high) radiative forcing tax in place, the better.
- justatdotin 8y ago
  > I think humans tend to deal better with quickly emerging crises than slow ones, so I’d much rather have a methane ecosystem we see problems with than exchange it for an equal forcing amount of CO2. yeahnah, we can see the problems with CO2 just fine thanks.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

by devy 8y ago

gwbas1c 8y ago

> All the while, nuclear is falling further behind renewable solar and wind power. As Schneider notes, the 3.3 GW of new nuclear capacity connected to the grid worldwide in 2017 (including three in China and a fourth in Pakistan built by Chinese firms) pales in comparison to the 53 GW of solar power installed in China alone. Somehow I don't think nuclear has any chance of coming back. The tone of the article is that no one can figure out how to build them. By the time we have lots of nuclear plants, we'll have even more cheap solar panels and cheap batteries.

devy 8y ago
> By the time we have lots of nuclear plants, we'll have even more cheap solar panels and cheap batteries. Probably true, for the better. But we shouldn't shut down all the existing nuclear plants prematurely simply we fear a meltdown. Newer design are MUCH safer and Fukushima type meltdown is much less possible. Don't forget, the weather dependent, and high peak output during daytime but zero output at night time nature of the solar is still unresolved until mass grid-scale battery or some sort of energy storage device is deployed ubiquitous into our power infrastructure. That's gonna take forever. We haven't found another truly safe and renewable yet mass-scale energy source yet - nuclear is one right now. Don't abandon it before we find a reliable replacement.
- another-one-off 8y ago
  I'm just going off the wiki articles [1] and some random articles [eg, 2], but given the rarity of 'Fukushima type meltdowns' I'm still confused about why people are worried about them. Flooding and violent storms are much more dangerous. Fukushima's meltdown doesn't appear to have posed (or be posing) any particular threat to humans, given the drought of observable impacts. That said, I'm starting to understand that the risk is to farmland (although I am /extremely suspicious/ that most of the people who don't like nuclear haven't figured that out). Given how hysteric the response is to radiation risk, I'd really like to see a trustworthy source describe how and why the legal limits are set to what they are - maybe one day I will. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_effects_from_the_Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_effects_from_the_Fuk... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35761136 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35761136
  - DoctorOetker 8y ago
    From a cognitive/psychological/understanding perspective: Fundamentally the reason it is hard for average citizens to understand the dangers of radioactive materials, is because humans are pretty bad at understanding huge numbers, similar to how we are poor at dealing with low probabilities. The big number in question is avogadro's number. A tiny speck of material contains huge amounts of nuclei. A single nuclear disintegration (after being say ingested) can cause mutations in multiple ways (chemically by daughter nucleus and alpha particle, compton effect knocking an electron away, beta particle ionization, ...). for a given level of enrichment in a radioactive material, the number of fissionable nuclei is proportional to Avogadro's constant, it's pretty hard to fathom the number of future disintegrations. Another way in which the paramount requirement that these materials not mix with our environment is hard to visualize is again Avogadro's number: once mixed into the environment it becomes very hard, to unmix them, again because of the sheer number of nuclei in even small samples of normal matter. Then there is also of course our poor intuition with low probability events, and that any unforseen rate/probability that is greater than the sum of all rates/probabilities of all known failure mechanisms would easily dwarf this sum of known failure probabilities, since we engineer the known ones to be as small as possible. Just today I read in the local paper that our nuclear reactors apparently weren't built to specification, and the steel in the reinforced concrete is degrading, and would not withstand many events (like a plane crashing into the reactor) There is a known example of a hijacked plane, where the perpetrators threatened to crash into an experimental nuclear reactor. Cryptocurrencies did not exist yet so they were forced to land in order to receive their demands, today they would not have to... The legal limits are defined in terms of natural background radiation.
patrickg_zill 8y ago
1. China bought 4x nuclear plants from Westinghouse. It was clear to everyone involved that China was going to clone their design. Everything had to be built with Chinese labor and engineers and the entire blueprints were handed over to the Chinese. After those 4 are built, China will build as many as they want themselves, likely royalty-free. 2. the 3.3Gw is 24x7 minus downtime/maintenance. The 53GW is less than 12h/day, depending on how it is installed it may well be far less than 12h/day of peak output. So likelier to be ~ 12-18Gw on a continuous basis given night time, cloud cover, rain, efficiency losses, etc. I agree the solar is still significant but it is less than the raw numbers make it appear.
- jabl 8y ago
  1. For the near future, it seems China is planning to build lots of their own designs (which AFAIU are improved versions of previous generation French designs (not EPR)). https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/07/03/russia-and-china-consolidate-new-nuclear-around-standardized-water-cooled-designs/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/07/03... 2. Some quick duckduckgo'ing suggests average capacity factor of Chinese utility solar is around 15%. (Really good locations like SW USA can reach up to 27%) . With a capacity factor of 90% for nukes, it's 3 GW nukes and 8 GW solar.

king_nothing 8y ago

Methane gun hypothesis (ie ESAS) is a real concern. Nuclear maybe necessary to drive carbon sequestration and complement other power gen.

nyolfen 8y ago
clathrate gun is the pascal’s wager of climate change

mercutio2 8y ago

Methane is a potent GHG, but its residency time in the atmosphere is on the order of one quarter as long as CO2. So in terms of our ability to adjust future climate forcings, releasing lots of methane in the short term and observing the many negative effects in the near future seems much better to me than releasing lots of CO2 and seeing the cumulative effects of those CO2 emission grow more slowly but last longer. I think humans tend to deal better with quickly emerging crises than slow ones, so I’d much rather have a methane ecosystem we see problems with than exchange it for an equal forcing amount of CO2. Of course, we can and should pursue CO2 reductions and fix accidental CH4 emissions at the same time.

simonh 8y ago
Many of the problems caused by warming would effectively be permanent though. Melted ice caps wont reform any time soon, especially since when they stop reflecting sunlight, the Albedo change alone will kick in even more warming. It could also take thousands of years to melt the tundra, slowly releasing vast quantities of methane, so even though individual molecules break down they will get replenished constantly over a long period. Finally the biggest sink of methane in the atmosphere is the hydroxyl reaction in the troposphere which - generates carbon dioxide.
- mercutio2 8y ago
  Excellent points, all! Certainly the hydroxyl reaction leaves behind CO2, but much less of it than an equivalent forcing of plain CO2, is my point. I still tend to think investing in cheap CH4 plants and pipelines is better than investing in coal, but I’ll happily concede the point that increased radiative forcings from any source have non-reversible effects, and we should be pricing in those externalities as soon as we can. The sooner we can get a (high) radiative forcing tax in place, the better.
justatdotin 8y ago
> I think humans tend to deal better with quickly emerging crises than slow ones, so I’d much rather have a methane ecosystem we see problems with than exchange it for an equal forcing amount of CO2. yeahnah, we can see the problems with CO2 just fine thanks.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]