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> Also it's not green. The mining of the fuel isn't, nor is its transportation, vitrification, fabrication, refinement or enrichment. The concrete and cooling o

by cyphar 4y ago

> Also it's not green. The mining of the fuel isn't, nor is its transportation, vitrification, fabrication, refinement or enrichment. The concrete and cooling of the plant isn't nor is the waste stream side of the equation. It's the classic hyperfocus on a small part of the chain and writing off everything else as externalities. By the same token, no energy production technology is "green". Solar panels use rare earth metals (and require clearing land in many cases), batteries use lithium, and wind farms have to have replacement fan blades every decade or so (which are not recyclable, so much so that the current state of the art is to burn them[1]) and kill larger birds of prey as well. > The back end is a trivial cost because it Has Not Been Dealt With. There are viable solutions for this[2] and given how natural deposits of uranium fare (even without containment they move very little on geological timescales), it seems deep geological storage really is an incredibly simple solution to this problem. [1]: https://youtu.be/knX7NkJILhs https://youtu.be/knX7NkJILhs [2]: https://youtu.be/4aUODXeAM-k https://youtu.be/4aUODXeAM-k

pfdietz 4y ago
> Solar panels use rare earth metals This is a falsehood, one that Shellenberger was notorious for spreading. No, solar panels do not use rare earth metals. That you repeat this well-debunked lie suggests you're getting your talking points from an echo chamber, not reliable sources.
- cyphar 4y ago
  Sorry, you're quite right that they don't use rare earth metals -- I was thinking of the Cadmium telluride and CIGS combinations used in some thin-film solar panels (which aren't rare earth metals -- it's been a while since I've done chemistry), but looking at it some more it seems like they aren't toxic (even though the constituent elements are). My bad (though I don't know who Shellenberger is.) However, since the currently proposed solution for renewables is to pair them with large battery banks to solve the reliability issue, the greenness issues with batteries still stand.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    CIGS has close to zero market share. CdTe is around 5%, last I checked. The vast majority of PV sold is crystalline silicon. The only toxic element used there is lead in backing sheets, but even that is being phased out (in part for environmental reasons, and in part because higher efficiency versions of Si cells can't tolerate the heating needed to bond to the lead; in any case there is nothing essential about the lead.) The only rare element used is silver for front contacts, but that could be replaced by copper with the use of a very thin layer of nickel or molybdenum to prevent reaction of the copper with the silicon. The environmental impact from PV is largely from the mundane components, like steel, aluminum, and glass. PV to power the world would use these materials in small quantities compared to that used for global industrial society as a whole (global annual production of steel is 2 billion tonnes, for example). If that society deals with the impact of its overall non-energy activities, it could deal with the impact of building and maintaining a PV energy source to power it.
  - kristopolous 4y ago
    > However, since the currently proposed solution for renewables is to pair them with large battery banks to solve the reliability issue, the greenness issues with batteries still stand. Incorrect. First of all, utility scale power storage can be done many ways, such as pumping water up a hill in the daytime and then letting it flow back down the hill at night. These are called "kinetic battery towers" or more generically "gravity batteries" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_battery https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_battery As far as classical batteries go there's many chemistries coming online soon that are far less hazardous such as sodium ion batteries https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery There's also saltwater chemistries, sugar based, paper nanotube, it's a long list. When considering nuclear we're always told to look at the currently nonexistent small scale next gen advanced nuclear of the future. Then it gets compared to renewable energy technology from 15 years ago. It's either intellectually sloppy or dishonest. Either way it's bad engineering. We can do better than nuclear - cheaper, safer, quicker to build, less management required, more scalable, etc. We don't have to worry about secret weapons programs or have international treaties to build them, no tsunami or earthquake risks, and best of all, the alternatives actually exists today

by cyphar 4y ago

pfdietz 4y ago

> Solar panels use rare earth metals This is a falsehood, one that Shellenberger was notorious for spreading. No, solar panels do not use rare earth metals. That you repeat this well-debunked lie suggests you're getting your talking points from an echo chamber, not reliable sources.

cyphar 4y ago
Sorry, you're quite right that they don't use rare earth metals -- I was thinking of the Cadmium telluride and CIGS combinations used in some thin-film solar panels (which aren't rare earth metals -- it's been a while since I've done chemistry), but looking at it some more it seems like they aren't toxic (even though the constituent elements are). My bad (though I don't know who Shellenberger is.) However, since the currently proposed solution for renewables is to pair them with large battery banks to solve the reliability issue, the greenness issues with batteries still stand.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  CIGS has close to zero market share. CdTe is around 5%, last I checked. The vast majority of PV sold is crystalline silicon. The only toxic element used there is lead in backing sheets, but even that is being phased out (in part for environmental reasons, and in part because higher efficiency versions of Si cells can't tolerate the heating needed to bond to the lead; in any case there is nothing essential about the lead.) The only rare element used is silver for front contacts, but that could be replaced by copper with the use of a very thin layer of nickel or molybdenum to prevent reaction of the copper with the silicon. The environmental impact from PV is largely from the mundane components, like steel, aluminum, and glass. PV to power the world would use these materials in small quantities compared to that used for global industrial society as a whole (global annual production of steel is 2 billion tonnes, for example). If that society deals with the impact of its overall non-energy activities, it could deal with the impact of building and maintaining a PV energy source to power it.
- kristopolous 4y ago
  > However, since the currently proposed solution for renewables is to pair them with large battery banks to solve the reliability issue, the greenness issues with batteries still stand. Incorrect. First of all, utility scale power storage can be done many ways, such as pumping water up a hill in the daytime and then letting it flow back down the hill at night. These are called "kinetic battery towers" or more generically "gravity batteries" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_battery https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_battery As far as classical batteries go there's many chemistries coming online soon that are far less hazardous such as sodium ion batteries https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery There's also saltwater chemistries, sugar based, paper nanotube, it's a long list. When considering nuclear we're always told to look at the currently nonexistent small scale next gen advanced nuclear of the future. Then it gets compared to renewable energy technology from 15 years ago. It's either intellectually sloppy or dishonest. Either way it's bad engineering. We can do better than nuclear - cheaper, safer, quicker to build, less management required, more scalable, etc. We don't have to worry about secret weapons programs or have international treaties to build them, no tsunami or earthquake risks, and best of all, the alternatives actually exists today