4 ms·

Exciting? Who cares if it is exciting? It's the most dense means of energy production that we have, in terms of cost, square footage, and like, every other posi

Exciting? Who cares if it is exciting? It's the most dense means of energy production that we have, in terms of cost, square footage, and like, every other positive metric I can think of.

epistasis 7y ago
In terms of cost, we are on the exponential improvement phase of the logistic technology curve for wind/solar/storage. For thermal energy, we are long past that. That's why "exciting" matters. Already wind/solar/storage have beat nuclear on cost, are beating coal, and in many areas solar+storage is beating natural gas for new installs. We don't know how much wind/solar/storage will improve on cost, but we know it will be quite a bit. We know that thermal generation of electricity is optimized to its max. As far as dense energy production, what benefit does that have? If you want to stick a steam turbine on wheels, or a nuclear reactor in a submarine, that would make sense, but I'm not sure how it helps for the grid.
- lokimedes 7y ago
  At some point it will dawn on us that the resources needed to build solar/wind is defined by the energy density available in these resources. Nuclear is basically invoking a deeper level of reality, one where energy is measured in MeV rather than paltry eV of chemical binding energy. Solar and wind are even less dense. It may be an old Physicist’s ramblings, but we have backed away from Prometheus’ fire way too soon to save ourselves.
  - epistasis 7y ago
    With wind and solar we are capturing leftover energy from the sun's fusion; the internal amount of storage is not relevant. With fossil fuels, we are simply using the stored energy from past fusion. It's likely that we will start creating synthetic fuels from the electricity that comes from wind and solar, if you want a dense storage mechanism for keeping fuel close by for mobile applications or isolated sites. There's nothing magical about nuclear, it's just a heat source. Unfortunately it's difficult to transmit heat long distances.
- igravious 7y ago
  > As far as dense energy production, what benefit does that have? So that we don't blanket the countryside with wind and solar farms? I would have thought that'd be obvious enough. Also, very few people are really factoring in the environmental costs of repairing and recycling huge turbines and masses of solar pv panels – it's externalities like these (and other externalities besides) that are masking the true cost of renewable tech in the same way that environmental pollution masks the true cost of so-called fossil fuels. Just you wait and see. The Chinese and Russians are forward thinking, increasing the allocation of atoms for peace in their energy mix.
  - epistasis 7y ago
    The land requirements for renewable energy are a tiny fraction of that used for farming, density is not a concern. Why would you think recycling turbines or panels or inverters is going to be onerous? The quantity of materials, and the nature of the materials do not seem in the least bit onerous.
    - mbell 7y ago
      > density is not a concern I don't think this is true. We would need about 20,000 sq mi of solar to cover just our electricity needs today. Problem is, electricity is only ~38% of our energy usage. To replace all energy used (transportation, heating, industrial, etc) we need something more like 53,000 sq mi of solar. This would be like covering all of Iowa or New York with solar. Since panels only last around 30 years, we also need the infrastructure to produce, install, remove and recycle ~1,750 sq mi of solar panels per year.
      - epistasis 7y ago
        Listing these numbers without context, one might think they are big. We have 1,400,000 sq mi of farmland (according to the 2007 stay I saw), so even if we use this prime space thats already been taken from nature, thats 1%-3% of farm land. We also have many other areas that are currently used by humans that we can cover. We cover something like 100,000 square miles with asphalt in the US, and that doesn't even directly produce revenue.

Exciting? Who cares if it is exciting? It's the most dense means of energy production that we have, in terms of cost, square footage, and like, every other positive metric I can think of.

epistasis 7y ago

In terms of cost, we are on the exponential improvement phase of the logistic technology curve for wind/solar/storage. For thermal energy, we are long past that. That's why "exciting" matters. Already wind/solar/storage have beat nuclear on cost, are beating coal, and in many areas solar+storage is beating natural gas for new installs. We don't know how much wind/solar/storage will improve on cost, but we know it will be quite a bit. We know that thermal generation of electricity is optimized to its max. As far as dense energy production, what benefit does that have? If you want to stick a steam turbine on wheels, or a nuclear reactor in a submarine, that would make sense, but I'm not sure how it helps for the grid.

lokimedes 7y ago
At some point it will dawn on us that the resources needed to build solar/wind is defined by the energy density available in these resources. Nuclear is basically invoking a deeper level of reality, one where energy is measured in MeV rather than paltry eV of chemical binding energy. Solar and wind are even less dense. It may be an old Physicist’s ramblings, but we have backed away from Prometheus’ fire way too soon to save ourselves.
- epistasis 7y ago
  With wind and solar we are capturing leftover energy from the sun's fusion; the internal amount of storage is not relevant. With fossil fuels, we are simply using the stored energy from past fusion. It's likely that we will start creating synthetic fuels from the electricity that comes from wind and solar, if you want a dense storage mechanism for keeping fuel close by for mobile applications or isolated sites. There's nothing magical about nuclear, it's just a heat source. Unfortunately it's difficult to transmit heat long distances.
igravious 7y ago
> As far as dense energy production, what benefit does that have? So that we don't blanket the countryside with wind and solar farms? I would have thought that'd be obvious enough. Also, very few people are really factoring in the environmental costs of repairing and recycling huge turbines and masses of solar pv panels – it's externalities like these (and other externalities besides) that are masking the true cost of renewable tech in the same way that environmental pollution masks the true cost of so-called fossil fuels. Just you wait and see. The Chinese and Russians are forward thinking, increasing the allocation of atoms for peace in their energy mix.
- epistasis 7y ago
  The land requirements for renewable energy are a tiny fraction of that used for farming, density is not a concern. Why would you think recycling turbines or panels or inverters is going to be onerous? The quantity of materials, and the nature of the materials do not seem in the least bit onerous.
  - mbell 7y ago
    > density is not a concern I don't think this is true. We would need about 20,000 sq mi of solar to cover just our electricity needs today. Problem is, electricity is only ~38% of our energy usage. To replace all energy used (transportation, heating, industrial, etc) we need something more like 53,000 sq mi of solar. This would be like covering all of Iowa or New York with solar. Since panels only last around 30 years, we also need the infrastructure to produce, install, remove and recycle ~1,750 sq mi of solar panels per year.
    - epistasis 7y ago
      Listing these numbers without context, one might think they are big. We have 1,400,000 sq mi of farmland (according to the 2007 stay I saw), so even if we use this prime space thats already been taken from nature, thats 1%-3% of farm land. We also have many other areas that are currently used by humans that we can cover. We cover something like 100,000 square miles with asphalt in the US, and that doesn't even directly produce revenue.