8 ms·
Hydro is actually pretty bad in terms of big safety incidents (Banqiao: 171000 dead, Machchu: 5000 dead, South Fork: 2208 dead) and solar/wind have trouble beat
by jjoonathan 6y ago
Hydro is actually pretty bad in terms of big safety incidents (Banqiao: 171000 dead, Machchu: 5000 dead, South Fork: 2208 dead) and solar/wind have trouble beating nuclear on metrics like death/watt because you need lots of infrastructure per watt. Picture a few large cities with contractors running around every roof tending to solar panels and compare to a few experts at a single nuclear power plant. For the contractors-on-roofs, the slip & falls add up even though they'll never get an HBO mini-series.
Anyway, I tend to agree that going forward solar + storage is probably workable. The storage part isn't proven yet but I have faith we'll figure it out. There are lots of promising options under investigation and the proven fallbacks aren't that horrendously expensive, all things considered.
It's just a pity we stopped building nuclear 40 years ago because it was viable all the way back then. Heck, we got to 20% nuclear! Compare to 2% solar today. If we had merely continued building nuclear at the same pace instead of stopping in the 1980s our grid would be 100% low-CO2 today instead of maybe 30 years from now if we hurry. But that didn't happen. We made the super-mature and responsible decision to fill our atmosphere with CO2 instead and now we get to live with that decision. So it goes.
- dghughes 6y agoHydroelectric projects also cause an increase in mercury levels specifically methylmercury. You'd think hydroelectric would be a safe method of generating power with flooding being the only bad effect. An Inuk guy in Labrador I follow on Twitter (@AndersenAngus) is trying to raise awareness about methylmercury due to flooding of land for hydroelectric dams. Here is some info on it via the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences: https://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2016/11/human-health-risks-hydroelectric-projects https://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2016/11/human-health-risks... "Microbes convert naturally occurring mercury in soils into potent methylmercury when land is flooded, such as when dams are built for hydroelectric projects. The methylmercury moves into the water and animals, magnifying as it moves up the food chain. This makes the toxin especially dangerous for indigenous communities living near hydroelectric projects because they tend to have diets rich in local fish, birds and marine mammals such as seals. "
- UweSchmidt 6y agoWe are just so bad grasping the entire chain of effects of our actions, and the environment is incredibly complex. We need massive automated testing of environmental impact; systems that surveil ground, air, biodiversity over time all around the globe and particularly near projects like dams. It's no longer possible to just shrug it off, hope the planet can tolerate it and subconsciously accept some human loss in the name of progress.
- cesarb 6y ago> Picture a few large cities with contractors running around every roof tending to solar panels and compare to a few experts at a single nuclear power plant. For the contractors-on-roofs, the slip & falls add up even though they'll never get an HBO mini-series. Most solar power will not be distributed power, but large-scale solar power plants. All large-scale solar power plants I've read about are on the ground, which makes sense since, unlike with wind power, increasing the height of the panels on a solar power plant gains nothing.
- gbrown 6y ago> increasing the height of the panels on a solar power plant gains nothing Well, not nothing, since less atmosphere means less energy dissipated before light hits the panels, but certainly it’s a better tradeoff cost-wise to keep them low.
- Scarblac 6y agoIt gains the space underneath. Flat roofs (of large commercial buildings, for instance) sound like a good place for them. I don't understand why they are put on the ground instead so often.
- CarbyAu 6y agoYeah, I keep coming back to this "$1 billion idea" of building a solar plant on big shed roofs. Quite literally buy a reasonable sized property in the country(with/near rail) and cover it in sheds. Once the solar energy output is established then the shed can be used for productive work. Preferably with some level of energy storage but a lot of productive sheds don't need much overnight electricity.
- elihu 6y agoSounds like a pretty good idea. You could run it as effectively two separate business, one is a power utility and the other rents storage or workshop space.
- cameldrv 6y ago
- jpdus 6y ago> Picture a few large cities with contractors running around every roof tending to solar panels and compare to a few experts at a single nuclear power plant. For the contractors-on-roofs, the slip & falls add up even though they'll never get an HBO mini-series. This is a very flawed and short-sighted argument. Averages don't matter when you are talking about fat-tailed/power law risk distributions. Nobody would be opposed to PVs on roofs in their neighborhood b/c some construction workers fall to death every year - this risk is well calculable. But (almost) everyone would be opposed to a fission plant or nuclear waste facility next door - and rightfully so. Without enormous direct and indirect subsidies, nuclear (fission) isnt commercially viable anywhere in the world. Heck, you still can't insure a fission plant. Yes, in theory fission would have been the best option for carbon-free energy. No, in practice humanity never figured out how to safely and efficiently use this power source and now renewables are a way safer and cheaper bet. You won't find any objective economic analysis (that incorporates such indirect subsidies as the implicit state guarantee and realistic building and waste handling/storing costs) that can show otherwise.
- arkh 6y ago> But (almost) everyone would be opposed to a fission plant or nuclear waste facility next door - and rightfully so. Reading this kind of debate from France is a good laugh. If you're interested you can check where our electricity comes from here: https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/la-production-delectricite-par-filiere https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/la-production-delectricit... (between 60 and 70 percent of nuclear energy today).
- worik 6y agoBecause France was desperate to have its own nuclear weapons. It was not economic for them either (tho back in the day it displaced coal - try having a coal plant next door)
- iso8859-1 6y agoWhat is the point of bringing up economics when we are talking about life and death? How can you even measure if something is economic or not if you haven't defined what a human life is worth?
- 6nf 6y agoHydro's main problem is that it's just not available in most countries / areas. Solar's main problem is that it's not reliable everywhere. Try setting up solar in Chengdu and you'll find that there's just not enough cloud free days in the year to make it worthwhile. We need baseline power and renewables are not usually enough. If you're lucky enough to have a river or sunny climate then great, but that's not possible in some places.
- Reason077 6y ago> "solar/wind have trouble beating nuclear on metrics like death/watt because you need lots of infrastructure per watt." That may be so. But solar and wind are clear winners when it comes to cost/watt, and that's what determines which gets built.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoIf the energy source is not providing energy when i need it, i dont care that its cheap at some other time when its of no use to me. Safety is not a real problema in rebewavles, they are much safe than mining/ fossil fuels of any kind.
- arcticbull 6y agoNuclear is the safest energy source in terms of deaths per terawatt hour [1] [1] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy#:~:text=Nuclear%20and%20renewable%20sources%20are,of%20times%20safer%20than%20gas https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy#:~:text=....
- bsder 6y agoSouth Fork was never a hydroelectric dam. It was an earthen dam meant to create a lake for the robber barons of the day. And it was fine, until said robber barons decided not to maintain the dam.
- kbenson 6y ago> solar/wind have trouble beating nuclear on metrics like death/watt because you need lots of infrastructure per watt. Really, this makes me think one thing, jobs. We can take steps to make jobs safer, but if solar/wind get even close to nuclear but employ a lot more people, then that's a huge gain overall. Reducing personnel costs is a gain for a company's bottom line. Increasing personnel costs is good for society, as it means either more employed or higher wages (assuming it's not higher wages that somehow results in fewer people). Decreasing company/product costs with a new technology that also does so while employing significantly more people is a huge win for everyone (except those that refused to diversify from the old technology). Edit: whoops s/jobs cheaper/jobs safer/
- andrepd 6y ago>Increasing personnel costs is good for society This is your brain on capitalism. :p More seriously: more jobs, more human effort, more accidents and injuries and death, less free time... this is objectively a bad thing. It's only from the lens of the current economic system that it becomes a positive thing, which speaks volumes in itself.
- kbenson 6y agoWell, part of the problem is that I said "we can take steps to make jobs cheaper" when I meant "we can take steps to make jobs safer". We keep automating away jobs. People want/need work, mostly for money, but also because want to feel they are doing something and part of something. So I don't take it as a given that less free time and more human effort is objectively a bad thing. It really depends on the person and whether they feel a sense of accomplishment in their work. As for death and accidents, that's somewhat addressed by my typo fix. > It's only from the lens of the current economic system that it becomes a positive thing, which speaks volumes in itself. The thing about the current economic system is that it's the current economic system. It can change, in small ways and big ways, but I'm not not sure it will (even if we're probably in the absolute best time to try out UBI we'll see in our lifetimes, and it will be a shame if/when it passes us by in that respect, even if it means life is much better overall).
- Retric 6y agoHydro also directly saves lives by reducing flooding and indirectly via clean water. On net world wide hydroelectric dams have saved more lives directly than they have cost from dam failures. Which is unique among all energy sources. For context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_floods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_floods As to nuclear, it’s horribly expensive when you try to scale it. France was regularly exporting and importing vast amounts of electricity to other countries and their power plant utilization was still 10% below the US etc. That directly equated to significantly higher prices.
- pfdietz 6y ago> olar/wind have trouble beating nuclear on metrics like death/watt because you need lots of infrastructure per watt. There were some studies claiming nuclear has lower deaths/kWh, but as I recall they (1) used old numbers for wind that do not reflect current safety figures, (2) assumed solar was rooftop instead of utility-scale which is now dominating installations (because it is so much cheaper), and (3) ignored deaths from uranium mining, which is where most of the release of radioactive material is in the fuel cycle.
- jayd16 6y ago>For the contractors-on-roofs, the slip & falls add up even though they'll never get an HBO mini-series. Are solar roofs significantly more dangerous to work on than a normal roof for some reason? Roofs are going up whether they have panels or not.