5 ms·

I can promise you the energy industry knows about both CapEx and OpEx and has incredibly in depth models on them for all relevant energy technologies. And on t

by bob29 6y ago

I can promise you the energy industry knows about both CapEx and OpEx and has incredibly in depth models on them for all relevant energy technologies. And on the topic, I can also promise you that they do in fact know about the concept of capacity factor and that the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. And on the topic of France, their reactors oveheat the river they use for cooling and have to shutdown. And just as you claim you can't soley consider the cost of a plant, you can't solely consider the smokestack emissions of a plant without consider the mining, enrichment, handling, and disposal of nuclear. Germany has a large CO2 output because they have a large manufacturing industry, and for policy reasons technically decoupled from their investment in solar, they also maintain production capacity of a dirty type of coal as power source because they have it in abundance within their own borders, its a security interest. If you think your armchair analysis has outsmarted the energy industry then go ahead and invest in fossil and nuclear i guess.

hinkley 6y ago
If we don’t switch to wind and solar we’re going to be hearing a lot about heat pollution in the coming decades. They fought Clinton, Illinois’ nuclear plant for decades. The locals were uneasy because it’s on a recreational lake. The lobby for it dismissed the concerns of the uneducated rabble and built it anyway. An amoeba that causes encephalitis grew in the heat from the cooling plant. Nobody was allowed to swim there anymore. There’s not a lot to do in the middle of the Plains States if you aren’t in a metropolitan area. Swimming and boating are two of your options. Fusion, fission, geothermal all dump between one and two units of heat at the source for every two units they push down a power line (which is mostly turned into heat at the destination and a little along the way). In the big picture, all of them are bad pairings with global warming. And hydro reservoirs boost methane emissions.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  Isn't heat pollution a lost energy opportunity, where the heat could be reclaimed to generate electricity as well?
  - elihu 6y ago
    At some point it gets cool enough that it's hard to extract useful energy from it. Extracting energy from hot water is easier, but as a byproduct you end up with an enormous amount of lukewarm water that isn't useful for power generation.
  - hinkley 6y ago
    Heat engines work with a large temperature gradient. In the same way heat pumps can’t drive a larger temperature gradient past a point (see AC in the Arizona summer). The 35 or 60% efficiency of the first phase can’t simply be stacked. If you don’t have an industry that uses heat directly, on site (cogeneration), that’s simply the cost of extraction.
  - fy20 6y ago
    Yes. This is one thing the USSR did well, they captured heat from almost all power stations to provide heat to the local city (that was probably built to house employees of the plant).
    - FabHK 6y ago
      We have that in Germany as well, "Fernwärme" (="remote heat"). Apparently it's ubiquitous in Denmark and Sweden as well. Apparently they started building this based on nuclear power plants as well in Russia (Woronesch, Nischni Nowgorod), but gave it up. That would've been a bit creepy, to have a pipe straight from the local reactor to your home...
- konjin 6y ago
  As opposed to shadow pollution, and air obstruction. A lake somewhere being unswimmable is a small price to pay for a livable world.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - simlevesque 6y ago
    It's not just one lake.
  - hinkley 6y ago
    The recreational lake for a two county radius is not “some lake”. And if lakes are or aren’t really local, rivers sure as hell are not.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - joshspankit 6y ago
    “livable” as defined by.. lack of shadow pollution?
  - coldtea 6y ago
    A world with unswimmable lakes, polluted seas and rivers, etc. is not "livable".
- jjoonathan 6y ago
  How many square meters would you have to zero the albedo of to generate an equivalent amount of power with solar? Is or isn't solar-generated electricity magically exempt from the laws of thermodynamics that convert it to heat when you actually use it? Comparing tradeoffs is what we should be doing, but it's really frustrating when people just pretend that their favorite technology doesn't have the tradeoffs.
  - hinkley 6y ago
    40% of feed corn goes to making ethanol now. That's a huge amount of monoculture for a crop that requires a lot of fertilizer and a ton of water. You could use a fraction of that for solar, today. Less in the future.
    - jjoonathan 6y ago
      That's not an assessment of the heat pollution tradeoffs.
- mbrameld 6y ago
  You're spreading misinformation, either intentional or not. The reservoir that the Clinton Power Station uses for cooling was created explicitly to cool the plant, the recreational opportunities it brought were just a bonus. I can't find any references to cases of amebic encephalitis from that lake either, only a study stating that the amoeba was found in the lake both before and after the plant became operational. Their own website touts its swimming opportunities. Can you cite sources for any of your claims? https://www2.illinois.gov/dnr/Parks/Activity/Pages/ClintonLake.aspx https://www2.illinois.gov/dnr/Parks/Activity/Pages/ClintonLa... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_Lake_(Illinois) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_Lake_(Illinois) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_Power_Station https://www2.illinois.gov/dnr/Parks/About/Pages/ClintonLake.aspx https://www2.illinois.gov/dnr/Parks/About/Pages/ClintonLake....
  - hinkley 6y ago
    I'm glad they fixed that, but isn't this a case of Gell-Mann Amnesia? There's a lot of range between being so transparent you scare everyone and being the mayor from Jaws. I got it from regional news, at the time. If building a lake is how you bribe people into doing something they don't want to do, and then you take the lake away, then from their perspective you've lied. There are other ways to build a cooling plant for a nuclear power station, btw. Lots of places make them do that now, because dumping the heat back into the environment instead of into the sky causes far more mundane problems than this. And occasionally weirder ones. And since the thesis was about heat pollution, not regional nuclear politics, I'll thank you not to nitpick.
    - mbrameld 6y ago
      But the lake wasn't taken away from anyone, it's still safe to swim and boat in today. No, it's not like Gell-Mann amnesia at all. It really feels like you're pushing a particular narrative, facts be damned.
jjoonathan 6y ago
> I can also promise you that they do in fact know Of course they know, but I don't care about what they know, I care about what they say and if it's true or not! Are the headline figures fudged by neglecting storage or including subsidies? Or is the headline legitimate, and solar can actually stand on its own now?
Ericson2314 6y ago
My guess is someone wrote "Solar is now the cheapest marginal source of new power", and someone else that doesn't understand calculus and (non-)fungibility fucked it up.
curiousgeorgio 6y ago
Curious to hear your take on the Democratic Party's recent reversal on their stance regarding nuclear[1]. It seems to me that if a group of people who were once so vehemently against nuclear for decades (few people were more vocal in opposition to it) finally realized that their fight against climate change simply isn't practical without nuclear, then why are some people still so against it? You couldn't ask for a more powerful endorsement than the one from nuclear's (former) greatest critic. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertbryce/2020/08/23/after-48-years-democrats-endorse-nuclear-energy-in-platform/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertbryce/2020/08/23/after-48...
belorn 6y ago
It is likely that politicians know pretty well the difference between what they say to the public and the actually effect their policy have on the market. It is also very important for the public to call them out when reality and truth does not match the promises given in political speech. When the Swedish government shut down a nuclear reaction the political promise were a greener power grid that polluted less. What we instead got was a oil power plant in the southern part of Sweden that previous only operated as a backup in case of harsh cold winters. Now it is operating all year because it suddenly became commercial viable to do so. For long I have advocated that the solution to this disconnect between what is being said and what actually happens is laws. No new fossil fueled power plants, and no extended capacity by fossil fueled power plants. One do not need to be pro-nuclear, nor pro-solar or pro-wind. All that is needed is an expanding energy demand, a aging nuclear power plants, and a law that forbid people to use the easy but environmentally damaging alternative. Smart people in the energy industry can figure out what is the cheapest alternative that does not warm up the planet, and politician can stop trying to sell an untruth.
coldtea 6y ago
>I can promise you the energy industry knows about both CapEx and OpEx and has incredibly in depth models on them for all relevant energy technologies. And on the topic, I can also promise you that they do in fact know about the concept of capacity factor and that the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. Well, con-men also know that they sell BS, and what exactly is in the snake oil that they sell, but they still push it...
Kuinox 6y ago
Don't spread misinformation. Some nuclear reactor were shutdown to protect fish in the river in a summer during a heatwave because they had no cooling tower. Nuclear reactor with cooling tower were fine. And current solar panels are less efficient when it's hot. You dismiss CO2 per kWh because you say the whole lifecycle of the nuclear plant and it's fuel should be taken in account. Well it is already.

by bob29 6y ago

hinkley 6y ago

If we don’t switch to wind and solar we’re going to be hearing a lot about heat pollution in the coming decades. They fought Clinton, Illinois’ nuclear plant for decades. The locals were uneasy because it’s on a recreational lake. The lobby for it dismissed the concerns of the uneducated rabble and built it anyway. An amoeba that causes encephalitis grew in the heat from the cooling plant. Nobody was allowed to swim there anymore. There’s not a lot to do in the middle of the Plains States if you aren’t in a metropolitan area. Swimming and boating are two of your options. Fusion, fission, geothermal all dump between one and two units of heat at the source for every two units they push down a power line (which is mostly turned into heat at the destination and a little along the way). In the big picture, all of them are bad pairings with global warming. And hydro reservoirs boost methane emissions.

ineedasername 6y ago
Isn't heat pollution a lost energy opportunity, where the heat could be reclaimed to generate electricity as well?
- elihu 6y ago
  At some point it gets cool enough that it's hard to extract useful energy from it. Extracting energy from hot water is easier, but as a byproduct you end up with an enormous amount of lukewarm water that isn't useful for power generation.
- hinkley 6y ago
  Heat engines work with a large temperature gradient. In the same way heat pumps can’t drive a larger temperature gradient past a point (see AC in the Arizona summer). The 35 or 60% efficiency of the first phase can’t simply be stacked. If you don’t have an industry that uses heat directly, on site (cogeneration), that’s simply the cost of extraction.
- fy20 6y ago
  Yes. This is one thing the USSR did well, they captured heat from almost all power stations to provide heat to the local city (that was probably built to house employees of the plant).
  - FabHK 6y ago
    We have that in Germany as well, "Fernwärme" (="remote heat"). Apparently it's ubiquitous in Denmark and Sweden as well. Apparently they started building this based on nuclear power plants as well in Russia (Woronesch, Nischni Nowgorod), but gave it up. That would've been a bit creepy, to have a pipe straight from the local reactor to your home...
konjin 6y ago
As opposed to shadow pollution, and air obstruction. A lake somewhere being unswimmable is a small price to pay for a livable world.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- simlevesque 6y ago
  It's not just one lake.
- hinkley 6y ago
  The recreational lake for a two county radius is not “some lake”. And if lakes are or aren’t really local, rivers sure as hell are not.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- joshspankit 6y ago
  “livable” as defined by.. lack of shadow pollution?
- coldtea 6y ago
  A world with unswimmable lakes, polluted seas and rivers, etc. is not "livable".
jjoonathan 6y ago
How many square meters would you have to zero the albedo of to generate an equivalent amount of power with solar? Is or isn't solar-generated electricity magically exempt from the laws of thermodynamics that convert it to heat when you actually use it? Comparing tradeoffs is what we should be doing, but it's really frustrating when people just pretend that their favorite technology doesn't have the tradeoffs.
- hinkley 6y ago
  40% of feed corn goes to making ethanol now. That's a huge amount of monoculture for a crop that requires a lot of fertilizer and a ton of water. You could use a fraction of that for solar, today. Less in the future.
  - jjoonathan 6y ago
    That's not an assessment of the heat pollution tradeoffs.
mbrameld 6y ago
You're spreading misinformation, either intentional or not. The reservoir that the Clinton Power Station uses for cooling was created explicitly to cool the plant, the recreational opportunities it brought were just a bonus. I can't find any references to cases of amebic encephalitis from that lake either, only a study stating that the amoeba was found in the lake both before and after the plant became operational. Their own website touts its swimming opportunities. Can you cite sources for any of your claims? https://www2.illinois.gov/dnr/Parks/Activity/Pages/ClintonLake.aspx https://www2.illinois.gov/dnr/Parks/Activity/Pages/ClintonLa... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_Lake_(Illinois) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_Lake_(Illinois) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_Power_Station https://www2.illinois.gov/dnr/Parks/About/Pages/ClintonLake.aspx https://www2.illinois.gov/dnr/Parks/About/Pages/ClintonLake....
- hinkley 6y ago
  I'm glad they fixed that, but isn't this a case of Gell-Mann Amnesia? There's a lot of range between being so transparent you scare everyone and being the mayor from Jaws. I got it from regional news, at the time. If building a lake is how you bribe people into doing something they don't want to do, and then you take the lake away, then from their perspective you've lied. There are other ways to build a cooling plant for a nuclear power station, btw. Lots of places make them do that now, because dumping the heat back into the environment instead of into the sky causes far more mundane problems than this. And occasionally weirder ones. And since the thesis was about heat pollution, not regional nuclear politics, I'll thank you not to nitpick.
  - mbrameld 6y ago
    But the lake wasn't taken away from anyone, it's still safe to swim and boat in today. No, it's not like Gell-Mann amnesia at all. It really feels like you're pushing a particular narrative, facts be damned.

jjoonathan 6y ago

> I can also promise you that they do in fact know Of course they know, but I don't care about what they know, I care about what they say and if it's true or not! Are the headline figures fudged by neglecting storage or including subsidies? Or is the headline legitimate, and solar can actually stand on its own now?

Ericson2314 6y ago

My guess is someone wrote "Solar is now the cheapest marginal source of new power", and someone else that doesn't understand calculus and (non-)fungibility fucked it up.

curiousgeorgio 6y ago

Curious to hear your take on the Democratic Party's recent reversal on their stance regarding nuclear[1]. It seems to me that if a group of people who were once so vehemently against nuclear for decades (few people were more vocal in opposition to it) finally realized that their fight against climate change simply isn't practical without nuclear, then why are some people still so against it? You couldn't ask for a more powerful endorsement than the one from nuclear's (former) greatest critic. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertbryce/2020/08/23/after-48-years-democrats-endorse-nuclear-energy-in-platform/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertbryce/2020/08/23/after-48...

belorn 6y ago

It is likely that politicians know pretty well the difference between what they say to the public and the actually effect their policy have on the market. It is also very important for the public to call them out when reality and truth does not match the promises given in political speech. When the Swedish government shut down a nuclear reaction the political promise were a greener power grid that polluted less. What we instead got was a oil power plant in the southern part of Sweden that previous only operated as a backup in case of harsh cold winters. Now it is operating all year because it suddenly became commercial viable to do so. For long I have advocated that the solution to this disconnect between what is being said and what actually happens is laws. No new fossil fueled power plants, and no extended capacity by fossil fueled power plants. One do not need to be pro-nuclear, nor pro-solar or pro-wind. All that is needed is an expanding energy demand, a aging nuclear power plants, and a law that forbid people to use the easy but environmentally damaging alternative. Smart people in the energy industry can figure out what is the cheapest alternative that does not warm up the planet, and politician can stop trying to sell an untruth.

coldtea 6y ago

>I can promise you the energy industry knows about both CapEx and OpEx and has incredibly in depth models on them for all relevant energy technologies. And on the topic, I can also promise you that they do in fact know about the concept of capacity factor and that the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. Well, con-men also know that they sell BS, and what exactly is in the snake oil that they sell, but they still push it...

Kuinox 6y ago

Don't spread misinformation. Some nuclear reactor were shutdown to protect fish in the river in a summer during a heatwave because they had no cooling tower. Nuclear reactor with cooling tower were fine. And current solar panels are less efficient when it's hot. You dismiss CO2 per kWh because you say the whole lifecycle of the nuclear plant and it's fuel should be taken in account. Well it is already.