pfdietz

24 ms·

811.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
Heat is extracted at geothermal wells much faster than it is being replenished by the average rate of heat flow from the deeper Earth. It's effectively "heat mining". Granted, there's a lot of heat to be mined.
812.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
Or just gradually taper off fossil fuel use until storage and renewables carry everything. Exactly what "storage" means there is the key, especially at high latitude. Do not assume just batteries.
813.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
The balloon almost certainly contained a mixture of hydrogen and air (or possibly oxygen).
814.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
How necessary are party balloons?
815.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
I'm hoping in these verses Empedocles complains about crappy copper from a Babylonian merchant.
816.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
That sounds like Goodhart's Law in action.
817.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
I'm feeling old now.
818.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
> I think nuclear should be pursued even when building the plants is expensive. Why? Do you have a fetish for wasting money?
819.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
The best time to have given up on new nuclear construction was decades ago. The second best time is now.
820.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
Operational costs are more that just fuel, they are also the cost of staffing and fixed maintenance. These can also be considerable, especially if one amortizes the upgrades needed for extended service life.
821.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
Low temperature even makes PV slightly more efficient.
822.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
Achieving putative cost reduction from Nth-of-a-kind plants would involve large subsidies of large numbers of plants. The cost could well be in 13 digits.
823.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
I see. You make a claim, and your argument is "you haven't proved me wrong". Classic crank behavior. You then back it up with the transparently nonsensical argument that "the sun doesn't shine at night." Bat
824.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
You insult our intelligence by making such a transparently ridiculous argument. Try again.
825.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
They're hard to cost, which means that the numbers that are given are more aspirational than realistic. It's in the interest of those touting projects to be as optimistic as is tolerable when the estimate costs -- and everyone ex
826.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
> You missed the asterisk where endless dependence on coal, gas or oil is a non-optional requirement. Please don't lie like this. Renewables do not require endless dependence on fossil fuels.
827.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
Geothermal is also looking promising, probably more so than nuclear.
828.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
It would be inaccurate in that it would not, in fact, be powering the world. The bigger deceit in the statement was the implication that only batteries were needed to "power the world". This. Is. Wrong.
829.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
Efficiency was important in an environment where different civilizations were engaged in what amounts to a death struggle. Do we forget what won WW2?
830.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
So, about two orders of magnitude lower specific energy than Li-ion batteries. The extra cost per kg had better be damned small or this won't pencil out.
831.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
Compliance costs are there because the government takes up the burden of accident costs. If the government does that, you can expect the government to then have a say in how things are designed and operated.
832.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
The problem isn't technical dispatchability, it's economic dispatchability. A nuclear plant operated at 5-10% capacity factor would be ludicrously uneconomical, even to just operate.
833.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
You mean gravity batteries using concrete weights? A scam for suckers.
834.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
No, because most of that nuclear generation would be during times it wasn't needed. The residual 5-10% in the renewable + batteries world is highly nonuniform, utterly unsuited to being covered by nuclear.
835.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
It helps that the cost of a simple cycle gas turbine power plant (before the recent data center demand spike) is around $600/kW, maybe a factor of 20 cheaper per kW than a nuclear power plant. So backing up the whole grid with such g
836.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
The goal ultimately is to get to 100% non-fossil fuel. CO2 is removed so slowly from the atmosphere that emissions have to go to nearly zero (preferably, to less than zero) or else we're just delaying disaster. The point I was making
837.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
Providing 90% of power is not "powering the world". It really helps to also have a complementary storage technology with low capacity capex, even if the round trip efficiency is lower. This would complement batteries in the same
838.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
In North America, deer eat acorns, but apparently are not suitable for domestication.
839.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
This is the statistical equivalent of those global warming deniers who look at short term noise to declare a trend.
840.
by pfdietz 7mo ago
This mine is only allowed to expand under the lake, precisely because of concern about subsidence.

More ›