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I am very wishful but its still stuck in the wishful thinking phase. Obviously the 'trade war' derailing it is a travesty, but I think its important at this po
by cagenut 7y ago
I am very wishful but its still stuck in the wishful thinking phase. Obviously the 'trade war' derailing it is a travesty, but I think its important at this point (post SR15) to recognize that wishful thinking for future tech is a form of soft/self-delusional climate change denialism. The graphs are very stark at this point. We need to turn the corner on emissions in 2020/2021. That means anything still in the R&D phase is not going to be part of the first decade of the solution. This is basic project management not even an opinion on nuclear safety/proliferation.
- DennisP 7y agoYes, but if you believe that going from our current level of wind/solar to 80% wind/solar is a lot easier per gigawatt than going from 80% to 100%, then it still makes sense to develop advanced nuclear for the last part, while still rolling out wind/solar as fast as possible right now. Not to mention, fast reactors like the TWR can destroy the nuclear waste that people claim to be so worried about.
- bassman9000 7y agoAnd they are not the only kind of reactors than can. Fast breeders can too, as well as MSR, while producing usable isotopes (e.g. medical). Waste is a solvable problem.
- baq 7y agoSolar has a really bad eroi problem and I say it as an enthusiast and an owner of a microinstallation on my roof. New nuclear is absolutely necessary but it just can’t come online for a million reasons.
- the8472 7y agoSome countries manage better than others. Perhaps they'll profit from electricity or hydrogen exports in the future. https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/WorldStatistics/UnderConstructionReactorsByCountry.aspx https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/WorldStatistics/UnderConstruction...
- choeger 7y agoEroi is a red herring. The question should be energy returned on manual labor.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoHow is EROI a red herring? Energy returned on manual labor may be interesting wrt. profitability, but EROI is literally whether there's any sense of doing it in the first place.
- choeger 7y agoThe thing is: if you can output (through highly automated processes) a device that yields even just 1% more energy than it required in production over its lifetime, you have the opportunity for an exponential growth in energy production at your hands. Higher EROI might indicate a steeper growth, but you can achieve the same by just scaling up production.
- pfdietz 7y agoEROI of solar is just fine. The notion that it's not is based on well-debunked flawed studies.
- ZeroGravitas 7y agoSolar has a good, and continually rising, eroi. But eroi isn't really a particularly useful metric: http://bountifulenergy.blogspot.com/2018/10/reports-of-low-eroi-for-solar-power-are.html?m=1 http://bountifulenergy.blogspot.com/2018/10/reports-of-low-e...