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> Meeting CO2 goals requires removing carbon actively from the atmosphere, and drastically reducing our use of CO2-producing energy sources. No. Either one cou

> Meeting CO2 goals requires removing carbon actively from the atmosphere, and drastically reducing our use of CO2-producing energy sources. No. Either one could be sufficient alone, just as you can lose weight either by exercising more or eating less alone, though generally the combination is better. For removing carbon from the atmosphere we could dump olivine sand into coastal waters where it would sequester carbon as it was weathered. If we want to reduce our use of CO2 producing energy sources without massive declines in quality of life or vast environmental damage there’s only one choice, nuclear.

jointpdf 7y ago
>If we want to reduce our use of CO2 producing energy sources without massive declines in quality of life or vast environmental damage there’s only one choice, nuclear. Unsubstantiated claim detected. Solar, wind, hydroelectric, and geothermal are all cheaper than nuclear (and even coal) for new generation capacity. That includes capital, operation and maintenance, and transmission costs. See tables starting on page 8 for the numbers (https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation....).
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  In that vein I reduced the amount of CO2 my car produced per year by one simple trick. I moved closer to work. I was commuting 8000 miles a year. Now I'm commuting 4000 miles. And it's 10 minutes to work instead of 30.
- Krssst 7y ago
  What about storage cost to make it viable for base load?
  - twic 7y ago
    Use surplus wind power at night to make hydrogen via electrolysis, and keep hydrogen-burning gas turbines or fuel cells or whatever around to fill in gaps.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  Solar requires the clearing of huge amounts of land, with the associated destruction of wildlife. To the best of my knowledge there has been no progress made in figuring out what to do with solar panels at the end of their working lives either and they all use lots of toxic heavy metals. Wind doesn’t leave lots of toxic waste but it does kill millions of birds and bats a year, disproportionately effecting large birds with long generation times, most of which are predators like eagles. Hydroelectric is at least less soul crushingly ugly but the environmental effects of flooding huge amounts of land are hardly positive. It’s also basically played out in developed countries. All of the suitable sites for hydroelectric power have been developed. Besides turning mountain ecosystems into lakes HEP is hideously dangerous in ways that are basically unavoidable. The failures of the Banqiao and Shimantan Dams killed 170-230K people in 1971[1] Solar, wind and hydro all entail a lot of damage to the environment, far more than is necessary from nuclear, just because they require much greater areas as they’re less energy dense. I don’t deny that nuclear is more expensive on those grounds. I just think that relative safety is more important. So by the most expansive counts Chernobyl killed 4,000[2] people while air pollution kills about 7 million a year, every year[3]. Germany’s closing of its nuclear power plants has lead to an additional 1,000 deaths a year[4] Nuclear is safer than any alternative source of energy, wind, solar and hydro included. If you include those costs nuclear looks amazing in comparison[6]. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam [2]https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-chernobyl-and-fukushima https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-cher... [3]https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollution/en/ https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollu... [4]https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/german-nuclear-phaseout-is-causing-1-100-additional-deaths-a-year-study https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/german-nucl... [5]http://papers.nber.org/tmp/26395-w26598.pdf http://papers.nber.org/tmp/26395-w26598.pdf [6]https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...
  - twic 7y ago
    The bird death from wind power thing is basically rubbish: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48936941 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48936941 Wind power kills fewer birds per unit energy than coal, and it kills orders of magnitude fewer birds than domestic cats, which we're apparently fine with. Plus, the big growth in wind power will probably be offshore: there's more wind and fewer NIMBYs there. There is also a lower density of birds.
Certhas 7y ago
Nuclear solves nothing. It has its role as a stop gap but renewables are cheaper safer and easier. The main challenge in a decarbonized energy sector (including heat!) is not week to week or day to day variability but season to season. That's best solved with power 2 gas and storage whether the major source of energy is nuclear (leaving nuclear reactors on idle for half the year is expensive) or renewables.
- 08-15 7y ago
  Germany has the most expensive electricity in the world (excluding Diesel powered islands). Electricity in neighboring France is a third or so of the price. Is that because France gets so much more sunlight?
  - aurelwu 7y ago
    That's vastly inaccurate. It is correct for household prices, but for energy intensive industry the difference is much smaller, something around 2 cents.
  - Certhas 7y ago
    Besides what the sibling pointed out: choices and subsidies, determine consumer prices. Coal subsidies still are vastly larger than renewable subsidies world wide. Compare the price of new wind and new nuclear stations. That admittedly doesn't give you total system cost, but you need solid models for that anyways, as electrification of mobility and heating will completely change demand structure in the electricity secto. The consumer price of electricity in Germany and France tells you absolutely nothing about any of that.
    - 08-15 7y ago
      I totally forgot about coal subsidies! Those must be the reason why German electricity was cheaper 20 years ago, when we still mined hard coal in the Ruhr area.
      - Certhas 7y ago
twic 7y ago
Nuclear is great, but at the moment, it takes a very long time - several years - and a huge amount of money to bring a plant online. We won't be able to build nuclear capacity fast enough to hit 2030 goals. I think we should absolutely be developing new nuclear plants. Hopefully we'll get designs which are cheaper, faster to build, and even safer that current ones, and then we should build loads of them. But in the next ten years, we just need to build all the offshore wind we possibly can.
jacknews 7y ago
There are many carbon-capture options. The olivine plan seems to me one of the more unrealistic ones. But to be sure, we will need to capture, in addition to switching to clean production, unless we switch a decade or more ago. I agree nuclear can play a big role in clean production, particularly that huge reactor in the sky.

jointpdf 7y ago

>If we want to reduce our use of CO2 producing energy sources without massive declines in quality of life or vast environmental damage there’s only one choice, nuclear. Unsubstantiated claim detected. Solar, wind, hydroelectric, and geothermal are all cheaper than nuclear (and even coal) for new generation capacity. That includes capital, operation and maintenance, and transmission costs. See tables starting on page 8 for the numbers (https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation....).

Gibbon1 7y ago
In that vein I reduced the amount of CO2 my car produced per year by one simple trick. I moved closer to work. I was commuting 8000 miles a year. Now I'm commuting 4000 miles. And it's 10 minutes to work instead of 30.
Krssst 7y ago
What about storage cost to make it viable for base load?
- twic 7y ago
  Use surplus wind power at night to make hydrogen via electrolysis, and keep hydrogen-burning gas turbines or fuel cells or whatever around to fill in gaps.
barry-cotter 7y ago
Solar requires the clearing of huge amounts of land, with the associated destruction of wildlife. To the best of my knowledge there has been no progress made in figuring out what to do with solar panels at the end of their working lives either and they all use lots of toxic heavy metals. Wind doesn’t leave lots of toxic waste but it does kill millions of birds and bats a year, disproportionately effecting large birds with long generation times, most of which are predators like eagles. Hydroelectric is at least less soul crushingly ugly but the environmental effects of flooding huge amounts of land are hardly positive. It’s also basically played out in developed countries. All of the suitable sites for hydroelectric power have been developed. Besides turning mountain ecosystems into lakes HEP is hideously dangerous in ways that are basically unavoidable. The failures of the Banqiao and Shimantan Dams killed 170-230K people in 1971[1] Solar, wind and hydro all entail a lot of damage to the environment, far more than is necessary from nuclear, just because they require much greater areas as they’re less energy dense. I don’t deny that nuclear is more expensive on those grounds. I just think that relative safety is more important. So by the most expansive counts Chernobyl killed 4,000[2] people while air pollution kills about 7 million a year, every year[3]. Germany’s closing of its nuclear power plants has lead to an additional 1,000 deaths a year[4] Nuclear is safer than any alternative source of energy, wind, solar and hydro included. If you include those costs nuclear looks amazing in comparison[6]. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam [2]https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-chernobyl-and-fukushima https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-cher... [3]https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollution/en/ https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollu... [4]https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/german-nuclear-phaseout-is-causing-1-100-additional-deaths-a-year-study https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/german-nucl... [5]http://papers.nber.org/tmp/26395-w26598.pdf http://papers.nber.org/tmp/26395-w26598.pdf [6]https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...
- twic 7y ago
  The bird death from wind power thing is basically rubbish: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48936941 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48936941 Wind power kills fewer birds per unit energy than coal, and it kills orders of magnitude fewer birds than domestic cats, which we're apparently fine with. Plus, the big growth in wind power will probably be offshore: there's more wind and fewer NIMBYs there. There is also a lower density of birds.

Certhas 7y ago

Nuclear solves nothing. It has its role as a stop gap but renewables are cheaper safer and easier. The main challenge in a decarbonized energy sector (including heat!) is not week to week or day to day variability but season to season. That's best solved with power 2 gas and storage whether the major source of energy is nuclear (leaving nuclear reactors on idle for half the year is expensive) or renewables.

08-15 7y ago
Germany has the most expensive electricity in the world (excluding Diesel powered islands). Electricity in neighboring France is a third or so of the price. Is that because France gets so much more sunlight?
- aurelwu 7y ago
  That's vastly inaccurate. It is correct for household prices, but for energy intensive industry the difference is much smaller, something around 2 cents.
- Certhas 7y ago
  Besides what the sibling pointed out: choices and subsidies, determine consumer prices. Coal subsidies still are vastly larger than renewable subsidies world wide. Compare the price of new wind and new nuclear stations. That admittedly doesn't give you total system cost, but you need solid models for that anyways, as electrification of mobility and heating will completely change demand structure in the electricity secto. The consumer price of electricity in Germany and France tells you absolutely nothing about any of that.
  - 08-15 7y ago
    I totally forgot about coal subsidies! Those must be the reason why German electricity was cheaper 20 years ago, when we still mined hard coal in the Ruhr area.
    - Certhas 7y ago

twic 7y ago

Nuclear is great, but at the moment, it takes a very long time - several years - and a huge amount of money to bring a plant online. We won't be able to build nuclear capacity fast enough to hit 2030 goals. I think we should absolutely be developing new nuclear plants. Hopefully we'll get designs which are cheaper, faster to build, and even safer that current ones, and then we should build loads of them. But in the next ten years, we just need to build all the offshore wind we possibly can.

jacknews 7y ago

There are many carbon-capture options. The olivine plan seems to me one of the more unrealistic ones. But to be sure, we will need to capture, in addition to switching to clean production, unless we switch a decade or more ago. I agree nuclear can play a big role in clean production, particularly that huge reactor in the sky.