pfdietz

46 ms·

781.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
Surely this question is in bad faith. Technologies start in a mode where they are maturing; asking if they emerge from the gate already scaled up is asking for far too much.
782.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
They all, so far, share the same basic biochemistry, derived from the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA). What would be extraordinarily interesting would be if we could find life on Earth with a fundamentally different biochemstry. Very
783.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
The square cube law pops up all over the place, my favorite being in fusion reactors, where it is a two edged sword.
784.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
Northern Europe really is the energy armpit of the post-fossil world, although more so away from coasts.
785.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
The implication that the energy couldn't be available when you need it is utter codswallop. At $0.01/kWh, PV electricity, if converted to resistive heat, would be below the cost of Henry Hub natural gas heat. And this heat would
786.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
He had been forced to retire six years earlier due to behavioral effects of the disease. It was very unpleasant, I understand.
787.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
Right, the deaths from (say) coal are much higher and would contribute significantly to cost.
788.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
What nonsense. Of course we cannot ignore the 200 estimated deaths from radiation, just because people die from other reasons. You might make a cogent case that the value of 200 lives isn't all that great compared to the benefits of
789.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
Even taking into account intermittency and seasonality, nuclear would have a very hard time surviving in a $0.01/kWh PV world.
790.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
Read again what you are responding to.
791.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
> maximum benefit If we do that, we need to assign a value to a statistical human life. This is usually taken to be something like $12M (adjusted for age). And having done that, we discover the contribution of lost lives to the cost of
792.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
If you want to go to Great Smokies, do it from the east side, not the west. The east side can be charming (I really liked Bryson City). Pigeon Forge? What a tourist trap hellscape.
793.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
> the sole victim of the Fukushima nuclear accident This is a misrepresentation. There is a single person who the courts have established was (to their satisfaction) killed by nuclear exposure from Fukushima, although even that is quite
794.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
> The only credible competition against a state funded nuclear plant is hypothetical next gen geothermal power though. If we extend renewables and batteries on historical experience curves they could become incredibly cheap, with solar w
795.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
I was nitpicking.
796.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
It was not initially in the rocks that we are tapping for geothermal energy, which would be a few kilometers. I wasn't talking about the Earth as a whole. Remember, this is about why so much more thickness is needed for the rocks for
797.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
It's not just political reversal risk; there's the risk of technological obsolescence. It's very much a stretch to assume a nuclear plant will remain operationally viable (in the sense of being competitive) for 40 years, ne
798.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_River_Junction,_Rhode_Isl...
799.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
No, the heat is not already there. The heat comes in and goes out; the heat energy initially in the crust decays away exponentially with time and has no effect on the steady stage temperature gradient.
800.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
I thought the second line was about Goering.
801.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
No, that is how natural geothermal energy works. Perhaps you mistakenly thought I was saying the heat comes from sunlight? I didn't. The heat comes from below (or, in some cases, from internal radioactive decay). And this delivery
802.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
Except now LLMs read everything.
803.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
Floyd sadly died at a fairly young age (65), of a degenerative brain disorder.
804.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
Sure, but large corporations have a lot of influence (read: money) to stop that sort of thing, so I don't see it going very far. Those building data centers can always play their trump card: just build the data center somewhere else.
805.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
And replacing the natural gas burned in those turbines with hydrogen won't be very expensive, since they will be used so infrequently. Storing energy as hydrogen is much cheaper than storing it in batteries, as measured by cost of sto
806.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
Batteries are not appropriate for dealing with Dunkelflauten. There's very little energy flowing through there, so what you want to do is trade lower round trip efficiency for lower capex. The high capex of batteries is best amortize
807.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
I think we're going to see a lot of grid defection, and not just from little consumers. Corporations won't wait for grid connections and will roll their own microgrids.
808.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
King Canute Trump trying to order back the tide.
809.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
Almost none of it is from fission. Fission is a very rare natural decay mode of uranium and thorium. Most of their radioactive energy output is from ordinary non-fission radioactive decay.
810.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
This leads naturally to "artificial geothermal", where solar energy is used to heat rocks or soil, and the heat is later extracted. It doesn't have to be anywhere near as deep as ordinary geothermal, which had to accumulate

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