5 ms·

There’s no energy source that doesn’t have serious environmental trade-offs, with the possible exception of geothermal. Hydro destroys river habitats, wind kill

• andrewl 6y ago
  I don't know how scalable it is, but isn't concentrated solar power fairly environmentally benign? That system uses mirrors and lenses to boil water and generate steam. The steam drives turbines attached to generators. There are certainly some environmental effects, as described at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power#Environmental_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power#Envir... But the basic model seems cleaner to me.
  • sesuximo 6y ago
    I think the primary drawback is amount of energy produced per (area | dollar | worker | etc).
  • jabl 6y ago
    The problem with solar, regardless of how it's harvested, is that it's a very diffuse energy source. So you inevitably end up with a relatively high material footprint.
  • loeg 6y ago
    Multiple problems: - High land use (low energy density). This has both economic and ecological cost/impact. It might be ok in the SW US, but likely unacceptable elsewhere. - Becomes less effective the further you get from the equator. - Energy storage is a problem at night time, and also cloudy days.
• acidburnNSA 6y ago
  Nuclear's environmental drawbacks are well known numerically but not by the general public. By TWh generated, their overall impact on land use and waste generation is astoundingly small because they leverage nuclear forces and E=MC². 2,000,000x less nuclear fuel is required to make a kWh than chemical fuel (fossil, biofuel, or storage in batteries). Fossil and biofuel kills 8,000,000 people/yr from air pollution. Add in climate change and who knows. Meanwhile nuclear power stations have caused Chernobyl and Fukushima, which were devastating locally but have had surprisingly little radiological impact [1,2]. [1] https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html [2] https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/fukushima.html https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/fukushima.html The thesis of the recent Michael Moore film "Planet of the Humans" [3] talks about human die-outs and serious trade-offs. I like your perspective of accepting trade-offs. This is very reasonable. Another recent film, Juice [4] is kind of the optimistic mirror of the Moore doco. [3] Full documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE [4] Promo: http://juicethemovie.com/ http://juicethemovie.com/
  • throwaway13337 6y ago
    Planet of the humans oddly makes almost no reference to nuclear as an option. It's just never explored. This seems like an intentional omission to go along with the rest of the doc's tone. I suppose making it into a marketing piece for nuclear wouldn't be good branding for Moore, either.
    • acidburnNSA 6y ago
      Yeah the nuclear advocates of the world were like, "huh ok. I guess that's a perfect pitch to us to swoop in with a slightly more positive outlook."
    • erentz 6y ago
      I never fact checked that movie on its critiques of wind and solar. Though I’ve seen some reports that would partly corroborate some of thrust of their claims elsewhere. I doubt it’s as black and white as they put it. That said it annoyed me that the movie spent a lot of time in Vermont and not once acknowledge that Vermont gets 70% of its electricity from clean nuclear power at the Vermont Yankee plant. And this particular plant is targeted for shutdown by environmental groups for a long time. This contradiction needs to be seriously dealt with and was ignored by the movie. The movie really basically boiled down to wind/solar is a scam and we can’t possibly think of any other solution (cough nuclear cough) so we need to reduce our use magically and oh I guess somehow tell the rest of the developing world to stop developing. This doesn’t work. It’s not a solution.
• nanomonkey 6y ago
  What about biomass gasification? The fuel source is self replicating and solar powered (plants). It's carbon negative, as one of the byproducts is biochar, a.k.a. char-ash, which can be buried in the soil (terra preta) in a manner that not only locks away atmospheric carbon, but also improves the soil composition (more friability, absorption of nutrients and micro biodiversity). It also is a good use of dead standing biomass that would otherwise decompose into methane and carbon dioxide, or result in forest fires.
  • acidburnNSA 6y ago
    If your energy source works by combining C with O₂ to make CO₂, water, and energy, there will be a concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere that is incompatible with solving climate change, even if it gets pulled out at some later time. It's the equilibrium concentration that matters. Low-carbon, non-combustion sources (wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, nuclear, tidal) are the only way to go.
    • nanomonkey 6y ago
      The CO2 is pulled out of the air by plants, during gasification you convert some of this biomass into CO2, water and energy, by burning the syngas; and some you leave behind as biochar. This biochar gets buried into the soil, creating the equilibrium deficit that you're looking for. Biochar is also estimated to be stable for some 10,000 years...thus its pretty much the only reversal to mining coal that we have. Not using the biomass results in methane, which is estimated to be 86 times worse (as a greenhouse gas compared to CO2 alone) for our atmosphere than CO2 alone.
• LegitShady 6y ago
  We are all waiting for fusion.