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3 - The rare earth mining operations in China which provide the raw materials for solar panels, batteries, and many other electronics products are reportedly qu

3 - The rare earth mining operations in China which provide the raw materials for solar panels, batteries, and many other electronics products are reportedly quite filthy and require massive energy (diesel trucks, processing plants, etc.) http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/rare-earth-mining-china-social-environmental-costs http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/rare-earth-m... The push for renewable energy would not be possible at its current scale if it weren't so attractive to the political elite (and subsidized as well), for the shortcomings you mentioned. Fossil fuels and nuclear simply better fulfill the role of consistent, cheap, plentiful energy. Unfortunately, even though nuclear is quite safe, has very few emissions, and emits a ton of energy, it takes a Herculean effort to get federal approval to build a plant.

mikeash 11y ago
Fossil fuels are massively subsidized by being allowed to pollute without paying for the consequences. They are not cheap when you account for the externalities they're allowed to impose. The decision to allow fossil fuel users to poison us all is a political one and it's pretty much the only reason renewables are even still a question instead of being the obvious answer.
- rplst8 11y ago
  Rare earth mineral mining also gets that subsidy as does the manufacture of PV panels.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    True, but the scale doesn't come anywhere close. Renewables production isn't changing the climate, poisoning seafood, or giving millions of people lung diseases.
    - hueving 11y ago
      Well it is because it depends on heavy industry to manufacture it. I'm curios, are there stats on the energy that goes into manufacturing a windmill + battery setup vs the expected energy output over the lifetime? In other words, are they at least self sustaining? Haul trucks and crushers for mining take massive amounts of energy that are currently being driven by fossil fuels. So renewables are subsidized by fossil fuels and the question is how much?
      - elektromekatron 11y ago
        There is a lot of research into this. The terminology is the energy return on energy invested, or ERoEI. And yes, wind power is definitely self sustaining. Wind turbines are pretty simple, cheap, and tend to last a while. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_inve...
- joe5150 11y ago
  There are heavy human costs, too, when you consider that mining and oil extraction can leave their laborers handicapped and often dependent on the welfare system, and when it becomes unprofitable to extract from a given area, these companies will disappear and leave the communities they supported to collapse.
- TheSpiceIsLife 11y ago
  I think the decision to allow fossil fuel users to poison us all is motivated, at least in the case of electricity, historically, by the improvement in air quality as people moved away from burning wood for heating and cooking. The small city I live in, ~100k population, is powered almost entirely by hydro electricity. Some small percentage still burn wood for heating and even that makes the air around town hazy, I'd hate to think what it would be like if everyone was still doing it. It's interesting to think about this. Those burning wood for heating are polluting the air locally -and globablly- and aren't paying a premium for the privilege, and at the same time all new hydro electricity in Australia was permanently shelved after the Franklin River Dam project was successfully blocked by The Wilderness Society 1983.[1] So Australian's can thank the 'environmental movement' for pushing us toward being one of the world leaders in CO2 polluters per capita - I think we're the OECD leader, if I remember correctly. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Dam_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Dam_controversy (Edit: a letter)
  - mikeash 11y ago
    I thought the historical motivation was just that there was not much of a concept of pollution harming people far away, so this sort of activity has traditionally been allowed by default. For thousands of years, you could burn your wood on your land and everybody was fine with that. At most you might have some trouble with your neighbors if they don't like your smoke. But the idea you'd cause diffuse harm to millions is pretty new, and has a lot of inertia to overcome.
    - elevenfist 11y ago
      This is actually incorrect. When I was digging through old new york times articles from the 1900s and 1930s (using the online search) I stumbled across numerous articles expressing concern about the pollutants being released by factories and combustion-engine automobiles, and how they not only affect the immediate area but surrounding towns. Don't have links to the sources at the moment, or the time right now to pull it up, will check back later, but if you search on nytimes.com you should be able to pull them up.
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  The fossil fuel subsidy is even more twisted than direct subsidies and externalities. Yes, oil and energy are directly related to productive capacity. To the extent that gas and coal can substitute for oil in electricity generation and industrial production means that the near-term prospect of an oil crunch isn't a net energy crisis (ignoring climate impacts), but it does have a massive impact on transport. But: ⚫ Energy is used to substitute for human labour in production functions. So it hugely increases output capacity. ⚫ We price oil not at its replacement cost, but at its cost of extraction. It's as if you had access to a bank account and were making withdrawals from it, but costed those at the rate of bus fare to the bank, rather than the full value of withdrawn funds. ⚫ Which means that not only does oil hugely accelerate industrial productivity, but it skews all economic prices downward hugely. It's not that oil companies have been greedy, but that oil's been under-priced for the past century and a half. Biodiesel -- hemp or canola oil -- runs about $1,000/bbl, roughly 25x the longt-erm price of oil (about $40/bbl), and 10x the price of "expensive" oil ($100/bbl). End of cheap, abundant oil is going to change a hell of a lot.
pjc50 11y ago
The modal emissions from nuclear are low, but the safety worst-case is a circle many square kilometers in diameter rendered uninhabitable (Fukushima) or damage to farming across a continent (Chernobyl).
- voidlogic 11y ago
  Fukushima & Chernobyl are very old designs, any analysis of nuclear power needs to be done in a way that is mindful of the greatly reduced risk posed by modern designs. I'd also point out that there is a generation of plant designs on the horizon that have a completely passive safety system, so loss of plant power does not disrupt safety and control systems. If the public can ever be convinced of the inherit safety of these new designs, rolling them out everywhere would be great economically and environmentally.
  - elektromekatron 11y ago
    It isn't the public that needs convincing. It is the people who provide the budgets who have drawn up rules that make it nearly impossible to build the safer designs as they haven't been run for as long a time as the unsafe ones, so score worse on the risk assessment. Hence why the UK is getting a brand new actively cooled pressurized water reactor built by China based on a French design, though it might not be now. - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b8741dd0-1048-11e5-bd70-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3du94l1BJ http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b8741dd0-1048-11e5-bd70-00144feabd...
- wstrange 11y ago
  Alternative energy also causes massive environmental damage and areas rendered unfit for life. See for example rare earth mining in China: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rare-earth-village-pollution http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rar...
- rwallace 11y ago
  Well if we're going to talk about worst case, the safety worst-case from coal might end up being a rerun of the Permian mass extinction, so nuclear is still the very clear winner.
mattmanser 11y ago
Nuclear quite obviously isn't 'quite safe' and I say that as a general supporter. Chernobyl and Fukushima show it's not entirely safe. There's a risk with nuclear, even in the safest reactor. Who knows what might happen in the future to force a country to run a reactor dangerously, budget cuts, government changes, national unrest, wars, sabotage. There's always going to be a % risk of something horrible happening. And of course, there's the waste.
- wstrange 11y ago
  If one measures fatalities per Kw/H generated, the data shows that nuclear is by far the safest form of power generated. See for example: http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-so... Nuclear is two orders of magnitude safer than coal, and is even safer than solar. The issue of nuclear waste is extremely overblown.
  - mjevans 11y ago
    The issue is also compounded by NIMBY people and clueless politicians preventing the construction of newer, safer, reactors and the correct operations of older ones until replacements are complete.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    I discussed this, at length, a week or two ago on HN. Nuclear power, while useful for military or space applications, can no longer compete on price for commercial electric generation. "Solar is already cheaper than utility power in 36 states [1], it estimated to reach grid parity in all 50 states next year [2], and US solar generation capacity surging to almost 40GW by the end of 2016 [3]" [1] http://news.investors.com/technology/061515-757277-tesla-sees-battery-costs-following-solar.htm http://news.investors.com/technology/061515-757277-tesla-see... [2] http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/deutsche-bank-sees-50-us-states-solar-grid-parity-2016 http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/deutsche-bank-sees-50-us-sta... [3] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-26/solar-as-fastest-growing-u-s-power-source-rivals-shale-boom http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-26/solar-as-f... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9728767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9728767 "Nuclear power plants take 10+ years to commission (Watts Bar in TN took nearly 36 years to complete), $1 billion USD to start (frequently approaching $2-4 billion), and have no permanent waste storage. Newer reactor designs that can burn up waste products instead of a once-through system haven't been tested in over 60 years (since first tested at Oak Ridge during the Manhattan Project in the late 50s; Thorium in a breeder blanket configuration)." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9728721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9728721 "> Yes, solar is cheaper than the retail with massive subsidies The numbers I quote are without subsidies. Wind is already cheaper than nuclear without subsidies, even taking into account nuclear power plants receive enormous liability waivers that wind doesn't require (they're only liable for the first $13 billion USD in damages from an accident; the US government picks up the rest). > So the rest of us are subsidizing solar owners through income taxes (federal) and the rates we pay for electricity. And the rest of us our subsidizing cheap coal by not paying for the damage it does through carbon dioxide and radioactive material release. Your point?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9728901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9728901
outworlder 11y ago
What about the raw materials for "conventional" power plants?

mikeash 11y ago

Fossil fuels are massively subsidized by being allowed to pollute without paying for the consequences. They are not cheap when you account for the externalities they're allowed to impose. The decision to allow fossil fuel users to poison us all is a political one and it's pretty much the only reason renewables are even still a question instead of being the obvious answer.

rplst8 11y ago
Rare earth mineral mining also gets that subsidy as does the manufacture of PV panels.
- mikeash 11y ago
  True, but the scale doesn't come anywhere close. Renewables production isn't changing the climate, poisoning seafood, or giving millions of people lung diseases.
  - hueving 11y ago
    Well it is because it depends on heavy industry to manufacture it. I'm curios, are there stats on the energy that goes into manufacturing a windmill + battery setup vs the expected energy output over the lifetime? In other words, are they at least self sustaining? Haul trucks and crushers for mining take massive amounts of energy that are currently being driven by fossil fuels. So renewables are subsidized by fossil fuels and the question is how much?
    - elektromekatron 11y ago
      There is a lot of research into this. The terminology is the energy return on energy invested, or ERoEI. And yes, wind power is definitely self sustaining. Wind turbines are pretty simple, cheap, and tend to last a while. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_inve...
joe5150 11y ago
There are heavy human costs, too, when you consider that mining and oil extraction can leave their laborers handicapped and often dependent on the welfare system, and when it becomes unprofitable to extract from a given area, these companies will disappear and leave the communities they supported to collapse.
TheSpiceIsLife 11y ago
I think the decision to allow fossil fuel users to poison us all is motivated, at least in the case of electricity, historically, by the improvement in air quality as people moved away from burning wood for heating and cooking. The small city I live in, ~100k population, is powered almost entirely by hydro electricity. Some small percentage still burn wood for heating and even that makes the air around town hazy, I'd hate to think what it would be like if everyone was still doing it. It's interesting to think about this. Those burning wood for heating are polluting the air locally -and globablly- and aren't paying a premium for the privilege, and at the same time all new hydro electricity in Australia was permanently shelved after the Franklin River Dam project was successfully blocked by The Wilderness Society 1983.[1] So Australian's can thank the 'environmental movement' for pushing us toward being one of the world leaders in CO2 polluters per capita - I think we're the OECD leader, if I remember correctly. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Dam_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Dam_controversy (Edit: a letter)
- mikeash 11y ago
  I thought the historical motivation was just that there was not much of a concept of pollution harming people far away, so this sort of activity has traditionally been allowed by default. For thousands of years, you could burn your wood on your land and everybody was fine with that. At most you might have some trouble with your neighbors if they don't like your smoke. But the idea you'd cause diffuse harm to millions is pretty new, and has a lot of inertia to overcome.
  - elevenfist 11y ago
    This is actually incorrect. When I was digging through old new york times articles from the 1900s and 1930s (using the online search) I stumbled across numerous articles expressing concern about the pollutants being released by factories and combustion-engine automobiles, and how they not only affect the immediate area but surrounding towns. Don't have links to the sources at the moment, or the time right now to pull it up, will check back later, but if you search on nytimes.com you should be able to pull them up.
dredmorbius 11y ago
The fossil fuel subsidy is even more twisted than direct subsidies and externalities. Yes, oil and energy are directly related to productive capacity. To the extent that gas and coal can substitute for oil in electricity generation and industrial production means that the near-term prospect of an oil crunch isn't a net energy crisis (ignoring climate impacts), but it does have a massive impact on transport. But: ⚫ Energy is used to substitute for human labour in production functions. So it hugely increases output capacity. ⚫ We price oil not at its replacement cost, but at its cost of extraction. It's as if you had access to a bank account and were making withdrawals from it, but costed those at the rate of bus fare to the bank, rather than the full value of withdrawn funds. ⚫ Which means that not only does oil hugely accelerate industrial productivity, but it skews all economic prices downward hugely. It's not that oil companies have been greedy, but that oil's been under-priced for the past century and a half. Biodiesel -- hemp or canola oil -- runs about $1,000/bbl, roughly 25x the longt-erm price of oil (about $40/bbl), and 10x the price of "expensive" oil ($100/bbl). End of cheap, abundant oil is going to change a hell of a lot.

pjc50 11y ago

The modal emissions from nuclear are low, but the safety worst-case is a circle many square kilometers in diameter rendered uninhabitable (Fukushima) or damage to farming across a continent (Chernobyl).

voidlogic 11y ago
Fukushima & Chernobyl are very old designs, any analysis of nuclear power needs to be done in a way that is mindful of the greatly reduced risk posed by modern designs. I'd also point out that there is a generation of plant designs on the horizon that have a completely passive safety system, so loss of plant power does not disrupt safety and control systems. If the public can ever be convinced of the inherit safety of these new designs, rolling them out everywhere would be great economically and environmentally.
- elektromekatron 11y ago
  It isn't the public that needs convincing. It is the people who provide the budgets who have drawn up rules that make it nearly impossible to build the safer designs as they haven't been run for as long a time as the unsafe ones, so score worse on the risk assessment. Hence why the UK is getting a brand new actively cooled pressurized water reactor built by China based on a French design, though it might not be now. - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b8741dd0-1048-11e5-bd70-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3du94l1BJ http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b8741dd0-1048-11e5-bd70-00144feabd...
wstrange 11y ago
Alternative energy also causes massive environmental damage and areas rendered unfit for life. See for example rare earth mining in China: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rare-earth-village-pollution http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rar...
rwallace 11y ago
Well if we're going to talk about worst case, the safety worst-case from coal might end up being a rerun of the Permian mass extinction, so nuclear is still the very clear winner.

mattmanser 11y ago

Nuclear quite obviously isn't 'quite safe' and I say that as a general supporter. Chernobyl and Fukushima show it's not entirely safe. There's a risk with nuclear, even in the safest reactor. Who knows what might happen in the future to force a country to run a reactor dangerously, budget cuts, government changes, national unrest, wars, sabotage. There's always going to be a % risk of something horrible happening. And of course, there's the waste.

wstrange 11y ago
If one measures fatalities per Kw/H generated, the data shows that nuclear is by far the safest form of power generated. See for example: http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-so... Nuclear is two orders of magnitude safer than coal, and is even safer than solar. The issue of nuclear waste is extremely overblown.
- mjevans 11y ago
  The issue is also compounded by NIMBY people and clueless politicians preventing the construction of newer, safer, reactors and the correct operations of older ones until replacements are complete.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  I discussed this, at length, a week or two ago on HN. Nuclear power, while useful for military or space applications, can no longer compete on price for commercial electric generation. "Solar is already cheaper than utility power in 36 states [1], it estimated to reach grid parity in all 50 states next year [2], and US solar generation capacity surging to almost 40GW by the end of 2016 [3]" [1] http://news.investors.com/technology/061515-757277-tesla-sees-battery-costs-following-solar.htm http://news.investors.com/technology/061515-757277-tesla-see... [2] http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/deutsche-bank-sees-50-us-states-solar-grid-parity-2016 http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/deutsche-bank-sees-50-us-sta... [3] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-26/solar-as-fastest-growing-u-s-power-source-rivals-shale-boom http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-26/solar-as-f... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9728767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9728767 "Nuclear power plants take 10+ years to commission (Watts Bar in TN took nearly 36 years to complete), $1 billion USD to start (frequently approaching $2-4 billion), and have no permanent waste storage. Newer reactor designs that can burn up waste products instead of a once-through system haven't been tested in over 60 years (since first tested at Oak Ridge during the Manhattan Project in the late 50s; Thorium in a breeder blanket configuration)." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9728721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9728721 "> Yes, solar is cheaper than the retail with massive subsidies The numbers I quote are without subsidies. Wind is already cheaper than nuclear without subsidies, even taking into account nuclear power plants receive enormous liability waivers that wind doesn't require (they're only liable for the first $13 billion USD in damages from an accident; the US government picks up the rest). > So the rest of us are subsidizing solar owners through income taxes (federal) and the rates we pay for electricity. And the rest of us our subsidizing cheap coal by not paying for the damage it does through carbon dioxide and radioactive material release. Your point?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9728901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9728901

outworlder 11y ago

What about the raw materials for "conventional" power plants?