8 ms·

> Nuclear energy and trains are possible, even if they require electrifying the railroads. Note: this is not a great idea; trains release less than a third as

> Nuclear energy and trains are possible, even if they require electrifying the railroads. Note: this is not a great idea; trains release less than a third as much co2 as a truck and electrifying cross country rail would be very expensive. You need extremely high voltage for long distance transmission, which is incompatible with pantographs (the metal things that power trains/buses from overhead). You'd essentially need to build dedicated HVDC lines alongside all trunk routes, with regular substations (which are immensely expensive for HVDC) to inject power into the lines. Cross country HVDC would be really great for the grid, but it would be better to build a dedicated solution and forget about the trains. For context, the transmission losses for electricity cause ~2x more CO2 than all trains. There are just better things to spend money on. Even if we put cold war levels on investment into reducing CO2 theres still better things to do, like dealing with landfill emissions, land use, rehabilitating environments etc. > Not sure about those "carbon removal" techs. A lot of the CO2 tends to go in the atmosphere. One way of looking at it: exhaust gases are 29% CO2 (from oxygen being burnt). Air is .4% CO2. Removing CO2 from air is, bare minimum, 75x more complex than preventing it. > You can't fight unemployment and inequality and try to reduce emissions. I can see ideology being a big problem when dealing with climate change. IMO that is a profoundly unhelpful way of looking at it. The money spent on the Iraq war would be enough to buy enough batteries to store ALL US ELECTRICITY for full two days. People didn't think twice about sprinting into war. Renewable energy is a largely trivial cost. People need to be convinced to throw scraps at it before we scare them with real changes.

KJKingJ 7y ago
> Note: this is not a great idea; trains release less than a third as much co2 as a truck and electrifying cross country rail would be very expensive. You need extremely high voltage for long distance transmission, which is incompatible with pantographs (the metal things that power trains/buses from overhead). > You'd essentially need to build dedicated HVDC lines alongside all trunk routes, with regular substations (which are immensely expensive for HVDC) to inject power into the lines. Cross country HVDC would be really great for the grid, but it would be better to build a dedicated solution and forget about the trains. For context, the transmission losses for electricity cause ~2x more CO2 than all trains. You're not wrong that electrification has a significant upfront cost associated with it, but using DC for it is absolutely not the preferred method for good reasons. Most rail electrification across the world uses 25kV AC overheads, which needs feeder stations typically only every ~50Km. Newer installations are moving to an autotransformer system, where transmission is at 50 kV AC but the trains still receive 25 kV AC, which reduces losses even further and increases the distance between feeder stations to every ~100Km. Additionally, electrification means that the benefits of moving generation towards less environmentally impacting sources has an immediate benefit on the trains, rather than waiting until the train is replaced. In the UK, over the last year CO2 emissions per passenger per mile have dropped by 10% in just the last year [0] due to a combination of electricity generation moving towards more renewable sources and newly electrified routes. [0]: https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/1531/rail-emissions-2018-19.pdf https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/1531/rail-emissions-2018...
- hwillis 7y ago
  I was talking specifically about using nuclear to electrify transcontinental lines in the US. Those routes have sections hundreds of kilometers long that are basically desolate.
zamfi 7y ago
> IMO that is a profoundly unhelpful way of looking at it. Agreed. > The money spent on the Iraq war [& Afghanistan, etc.] would be enough to buy enough batteries to store ALL US ELECTRICITY for full two days. Or, a base-version Tesla Model 3 for every driving-age resident of the US. Given that they're manufactured in the US, you'd be reducing emissions and hiring however many tens? (hundreds?) of thousands of people in the manufacturing sector. We don't even need to be that creative to feed two birds with one scone.
- rafa1981 7y ago
  Fighting environmentalv issues with extra consumption may not be a good idea. Manufacturing a vehicle pollutes a lot. Up to 50% of the enviromental costs of a vehicle seem to happen at manufacturing time. https://archive.attn.com/stories/13637/hidden-environmental-cost-manufacturing-vehicles https://archive.attn.com/stories/13637/hidden-environmental-...
  - zamfi 7y ago
    > Fighting environmental issues I’m not talking about fighting “environmental issues” — I’m explicitly talking about a) global climate change, which has little to do with ~75% of the environmental impacts of an electric vehicle, and b) not spending $trillions fighting wars due to Western society’s unslakable thirst for oil. [1] Let’s not goalpost this — mining & refining metals (etc.) is dirty business, and we should clean it up, but to be clear: it has a very limited impact on climate change. > extra consumption Extra consumption? I proposed taking the trillions of dollars spent on military equipment, plus fuel for planes, aircraft carriers, and other ships, tanks, etc., not to mention the deaths of thousands of people — war is “consumption” to an absurd degree — and replacing all that with domestic EVs. Don’t tell me that’s “extra consumption”. If anything it’s a dramatic reduction in consumption. [1] Whether you believe the war in Iraq was fought for oil or not, oil is a causative factor: without the presence of oil in the Middle East, and the riches its trade brings to the states in the area, it’s unlikely we’d be fighting there.

KJKingJ 7y ago

> Note: this is not a great idea; trains release less than a third as much co2 as a truck and electrifying cross country rail would be very expensive. You need extremely high voltage for long distance transmission, which is incompatible with pantographs (the metal things that power trains/buses from overhead). > You'd essentially need to build dedicated HVDC lines alongside all trunk routes, with regular substations (which are immensely expensive for HVDC) to inject power into the lines. Cross country HVDC would be really great for the grid, but it would be better to build a dedicated solution and forget about the trains. For context, the transmission losses for electricity cause ~2x more CO2 than all trains. You're not wrong that electrification has a significant upfront cost associated with it, but using DC for it is absolutely not the preferred method for good reasons. Most rail electrification across the world uses 25kV AC overheads, which needs feeder stations typically only every ~50Km. Newer installations are moving to an autotransformer system, where transmission is at 50 kV AC but the trains still receive 25 kV AC, which reduces losses even further and increases the distance between feeder stations to every ~100Km. Additionally, electrification means that the benefits of moving generation towards less environmentally impacting sources has an immediate benefit on the trains, rather than waiting until the train is replaced. In the UK, over the last year CO2 emissions per passenger per mile have dropped by 10% in just the last year [0] due to a combination of electricity generation moving towards more renewable sources and newly electrified routes. [0]: https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/1531/rail-emissions-2018-19.pdf https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/1531/rail-emissions-2018...

hwillis 7y ago
I was talking specifically about using nuclear to electrify transcontinental lines in the US. Those routes have sections hundreds of kilometers long that are basically desolate.

zamfi 7y ago

> IMO that is a profoundly unhelpful way of looking at it. Agreed. > The money spent on the Iraq war [& Afghanistan, etc.] would be enough to buy enough batteries to store ALL US ELECTRICITY for full two days. Or, a base-version Tesla Model 3 for every driving-age resident of the US. Given that they're manufactured in the US, you'd be reducing emissions and hiring however many tens? (hundreds?) of thousands of people in the manufacturing sector. We don't even need to be that creative to feed two birds with one scone.

rafa1981 7y ago
Fighting environmentalv issues with extra consumption may not be a good idea. Manufacturing a vehicle pollutes a lot. Up to 50% of the enviromental costs of a vehicle seem to happen at manufacturing time. https://archive.attn.com/stories/13637/hidden-environmental-cost-manufacturing-vehicles https://archive.attn.com/stories/13637/hidden-environmental-...
- zamfi 7y ago
  > Fighting environmental issues I’m not talking about fighting “environmental issues” — I’m explicitly talking about a) global climate change, which has little to do with ~75% of the environmental impacts of an electric vehicle, and b) not spending $trillions fighting wars due to Western society’s unslakable thirst for oil. [1] Let’s not goalpost this — mining & refining metals (etc.) is dirty business, and we should clean it up, but to be clear: it has a very limited impact on climate change. > extra consumption Extra consumption? I proposed taking the trillions of dollars spent on military equipment, plus fuel for planes, aircraft carriers, and other ships, tanks, etc., not to mention the deaths of thousands of people — war is “consumption” to an absurd degree — and replacing all that with domestic EVs. Don’t tell me that’s “extra consumption”. If anything it’s a dramatic reduction in consumption. [1] Whether you believe the war in Iraq was fought for oil or not, oil is a causative factor: without the presence of oil in the Middle East, and the riches its trade brings to the states in the area, it’s unlikely we’d be fighting there.