4 ms·

Lets try rephrasing it. Given that we need about 580m terajoules (source https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/climate-change/energy/global-energy-consumpti

by flir 3y ago

Lets try rephrasing it. Given that we need about 580m terajoules (source https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/climate-change/energy/global-energy-consumption https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/climate-change/ene...) what's the least worst way of achieving that? Mixed, obviously, and different mixes in different parts of the world, but what should be our first-choice energy source? Assume fusion's off the table for now, lets stick with things that already exist. My gut feeling is that wind, with its primarily local ecological impacts that are able to be minimised with careful placement and design, is a strong candidate for least-worst solution. The catastrophic failure mode of a wind farm does a lot less damage than the catastrohopic failure mode of a nuclear reactor, for a start. I do realise a lot of that wind power is probably going to end up in batteries (I'm hopeful for StEnSEA, but like fusion it's a bit Real Soon Now).

defrost 3y ago
Regardless of our personal positions and feelings on nuclear it's going ahead and will persist as a global low continuous baseload provider; South Korea is building more, China is building more, both at home and globally. In a very real sense to date the actual catastrophic failure modes of nuclear haven't been that bad on a realistic industrial scale. Chernobyl persists as a bad place to dig into the soil if you're a Russian soldier commanded to do dumb things, as a large area nature reserve the case could be made that it has been a positive for non human animals. The events at the Fukishima nuclear plant had few actual direct deaths, as an incident embedded within the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that directly caused 19,759 deaths, 6,242 injured, and 2,553 people missing it would fade from sight were it not for the evacuations and containment costs. The areas evacuated are already allowing returns to much of the region, the containment costs are the kinds of things that can be mitigated with engineering on future projects. I'm no great fan of nuclear but pragmatically designs and safety have improved over the decades and actual deaths and casualties look small compared to deaths in conventional resource mining and industrial accidents such as the Bhopal disaster (500,000 people exposed to the highly toxic gas methyl isocyanate). Sure, let's go with as much wind and solar as we can, let's have battery farms, green gas production, overnight thermal energy storage in sodium salts, etc. But let us also pay attention to the costs of "green energy" - the ramp up to meet the current fossil fuel power creation levels will drastically ramp up toxic waste byproducts from nickel|copper mining, litium for batteries, rare eath processing, etc. We are in a looming CO2 crisis that is worse for being kicked down the road since the 1970s when eraly action could have been taken. Let's not blindly walk into another e-waste crisis by greenwashing away the real issues that come with new energy sources.

by flir 3y ago

defrost 3y ago

Regardless of our personal positions and feelings on nuclear it's going ahead and will persist as a global low continuous baseload provider; South Korea is building more, China is building more, both at home and globally. In a very real sense to date the actual catastrophic failure modes of nuclear haven't been that bad on a realistic industrial scale. Chernobyl persists as a bad place to dig into the soil if you're a Russian soldier commanded to do dumb things, as a large area nature reserve the case could be made that it has been a positive for non human animals. The events at the Fukishima nuclear plant had few actual direct deaths, as an incident embedded within the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that directly caused 19,759 deaths, 6,242 injured, and 2,553 people missing it would fade from sight were it not for the evacuations and containment costs. The areas evacuated are already allowing returns to much of the region, the containment costs are the kinds of things that can be mitigated with engineering on future projects. I'm no great fan of nuclear but pragmatically designs and safety have improved over the decades and actual deaths and casualties look small compared to deaths in conventional resource mining and industrial accidents such as the Bhopal disaster (500,000 people exposed to the highly toxic gas methyl isocyanate). Sure, let's go with as much wind and solar as we can, let's have battery farms, green gas production, overnight thermal energy storage in sodium salts, etc. But let us also pay attention to the costs of "green energy" - the ramp up to meet the current fossil fuel power creation levels will drastically ramp up toxic waste byproducts from nickel|copper mining, litium for batteries, rare eath processing, etc. We are in a looming CO2 crisis that is worse for being kicked down the road since the 1970s when eraly action could have been taken. Let's not blindly walk into another e-waste crisis by greenwashing away the real issues that come with new energy sources.