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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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annewilo wrote: | There goes my Palidan -$3.74
There seems to be a knee jerk reaction to anything nuclear now that we have an old power station hit by level 9 earthquake and after shock tsunami.
When all the dust settles I think Japan could lead the way in renewable energy sources. Maybe this is the wake up call we have needed for something to be done with the highest radiation source we have, being the sun, to produce the fuel and energy we need to sustain a heavily reliant society on coal and nuclear solutions.
Throughout Europe they have also turned to nuclear power as there is and will be a huge demand on coal resources that are sure to run out in 75 years.
And those against nuclear, what is your alternative? You poo hoo a carbon tax, you say desal is too expensive but where are the suggestions and advances. We sit here and wait for future generations to resolve a problem that we in the main have caused.
And don't go the Gillard or Abbott route here. This has to be bi-partisan if we are to fix it and make it non political. It's a global issue that starts at home for me. |
Apart from Sun and Wind, the only other viable totally renewable, non polluting energy source would be tidal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_power
3 different options and with more research you'd expect them to get more efficient.
The latent kinetic energy is there, unlike wind or sun, tides are pretty constant and predictable, they just need to figure out how to best harness it.
There can be environmental impacts, but compared to burning coal, a nuclear meltdown or flooding a few thousand hectares of land to create a dam, i reckon they seem fairly minor. _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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For you I will consider it. |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006 Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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stui magpie wrote: | Apart from Sun and Wind, the only other viable totally renewable, non polluting energy source would be tidal. |
You forgot the elephant in the room! Geothermal power is simple, practical, cost-effective, and above all, reliable - i.e., you can depend on it being available all day, every day. Wind, solar, and tidal are great in their different ways, but all three provide power when nature wants to provide it, not when we want to use it. Geothermal power, on the other hand, runs 24x7. Even better, geothermal power can be switched on and switched off as you please. All you are doing, in the end, is pumping water into some hot rocks, then using the steam to generate electricity. Want more power? Pump more water. Have enough for now? Slow the pump down for a while. _________________ �Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006 Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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And the other elephant, an even bigger one than geothermal, is efficiency. We waste colossal amounts of power, probably three-quarters of what we produce is just pissed up against the waste wall. Simply by getting serious about cutting back on waste, we can get three-quarters of the way from where we are now to the renewable future. Best of all, it is cheap. By far the cheapest renewable option, and in many cases even cheaper than ugly, dangerous options like coal-fired thermal. It's a no brainer. _________________ �Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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Yep, between the various green energies mentioned above, the direction is a no-brainer. The carbon tax is necessary, though it's a poor cousin to the far more rational ETS. _________________ In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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Nick - Pie Man
Joined: 04 Aug 2010
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stui magpie wrote: |
I'd be happy to look at some nuclear plants in Australia, provided they were located hundreds of km from any civilisation. |
Exactly, what this Japan thing has taught us is the folly of placing houses near nuclear power plants.
Build the damn things in the deserts of central Australia where nobody goes and out power problems will be solved forever. |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006 Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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Not as easy as that, Nick, for several reasons.
(1) Cost. Regardless of all other factors, nuclear power costs 2 to 3 times more than competing technologies. Right now, the leading competitors (i.e., cheapest and easiest) are coal and gas-fired fossil thermal. Obviously, these are the very ones we have to get rid of if we don't want to destroy the planet with uncontrolled climate change. So the real competitors for nuclear power are the renewables - in rough order of significance, improved efficiency ('cause a watt saved is a watt earned), geothermal, solar, wind, biomass, and tidal. Nuclear is much dearer than improved efficiency (2 to 5 times dearer) but somewhere around the same price as large-scale renewable at present. Over time, however, this can be expected to change as the renewable sector develops greater scale and new technology. The nuclear industry has already been working on a large scale and trying hard to find the best technologies for 50+ years - in other words, we can expect much greater cost reductions in (e.g.) solar over the short to medium term than we can in nuclear. So, in the medium term (our lifetimes, say) nuclear will remain uncompetitive cost-wise. In the long to very long term, major technological breakthroughs may provide us with excellent quasi-nuclear power generation, notably through fusion power. We don't even know if this is actually practicable yet, let alone know exactly how to do it, but we are certainly working on it. Think 30-50 years, absolute best case, worst case never.
(2) People go into the deserts all the time. You'd be amazed how many people you run into in the deep outback. More grey nomads than grey kangaroos! Not to mention graziers, mining workers, Aboriginal people, scientists, and so on.
(3) Transmission losses (which is really cost again). The further you have to transmit power, the more of it is lost along the way. Good (think expensive) design can reduce transmission losses, but never, ever eliminate them. In the end, there is no getting around the fact that losses along any wire are proportional to the square of the current. Basic physics doesn't like remote power stations much! Further cost is added by the expense of remote construction (it costs more to build the same house a long way away), and the expense of building and maintaining high-tech transmission equipment.
(4) Safety. A bad nuclear accident is NOT a local event. Depending on the wind direction, we could have serious fallout in Sydney, Perth, Darwin, or Melbourne from a plant somewhere in Central Australia. Hell, right now they are facing a possibility of having to evacuate Tokyo because of a plant more than 100 kilometres away. Fallout from Chernobyl significantly impacted western Europe more than 1000 kilometres away.
Bottom line: it would be much cheaper and more effective (and safer too) to spend about half as much money on a mix of renewable technologies - efficiency, geothermal, wind, tidal, and so on. _________________ �Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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Hang on, I've been doing a bit of reading into this geothermal energy.
Apart from being quite limited in it's availability, it's also apparently reasonably inefficient.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_energy
All the arguments about location, apply here. You don't get to pick and choose where you put it, it depends where the hot rocks are.
Seems very limited. Maybe we should just put more research into cold fusion? _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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Magpie Jack
Joined: 21 Jul 2007 Location: Bribie Island, on the Collingwood Coast
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Unfortunately things seem to be getting worse in Japan with the upgrading of the disaster from a 4 to a 5. Events are still unfolding but it does seem to be a defining moment for the future as far as Nuclear Power Plants go. Germany has already stated they are going to faze theirs out completely and with their engineering expertise I reckon you will see huge advancements in alternative technology in the next decade. It's hard to imagine either side of politics in Aus embracing a Nuclear Power Plant now. _________________ Bob Rose....the measuring stick of humanity |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006 Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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Stui, I'd make several points which, taken together, pretty much overrule your doubts about geothermal.
1: efficiency isn't really an issue when you get something for nothing in the first place. Where the source is 100% renewable (which geothermal energy is), even if you can only economically extract 1% of thhe available energy at a given site, that is still a win.
2: There is plenty of hot rock - and entire planet full of it, in fact! There is hot rock underneath your feet right now - and I don't have to know where on Earth you are to be able to say that with 100% confidence. Obviously, it isn't always easy to get at or exploit, but considering the total world research end engineering investment in geothermal energy to date ($sweetfarrkall in the scheme of things), especially as compared to the starkly incredible sums we have already pissed up against the research wall of safe nuclear power generation, I don't think we can even think about dismissing it. The hot rock is there. Which is easier? Drilling a deeper hole? Or digging up the 965,000 Chernobyl victims and bringing them back to life?
3: remote locations are not nearly as much an issue as they are with nuclear stations. There are two reasons for this: (a) efficiency is a non-issue. With nuclear (or coal for that matter) we have to pay for the fuel we waste. Not so with geothermal. (b) We don't have to maintain a huge, high-tech, mega-complex plant out in the middle of nowhere, nor do we have to construct it. We just have to drill some holes and maintain some relatively simple machinery at the top of them - i.e., do much the same sort of thing the oil industry has been doing as routine for over a century.
I'm not saying geothermal is easy, but it offers such a huge benefit for zero risk and (as compared to nuclear in particular) very low total cost that to ignore it would be plain old-fashioned stupid. _________________ �Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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^
OK, Apply all the same logic to solar energy and it kicks geothermal energy's arse. the only place geothermal wins is the "Always On" bit.
You're obviously a fan of geothermal but I think you're making it seem a bit too easy and ignoring a few points.
Quote: | efficiency isn't really an issue when you get something for nothing in the first place. Where the source is 100% renewable (which geothermal energy is), even if you can only economically extract 1% of thhe available energy at a given site, that is still a win.
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yeah, but you're only getting access to the heat source for free. you still have to build the plant, pipe in the water, trap the steam, use the steam to turn a turbine.................
Tidal power, you stick a turbine in the water and let nature do it's work. Solar, you lay out the panels and have a beer while the batteries charge up. geothermal is a nuclear or coal fired plant, without the nukes or coal. I'd like to see us get away from having to boil water to create steam to turn a turbine and get to creating electricity with as few moving parts (minimise maintenance) as possible.
Geothermal might have the smallest environmental footprint as you don't have to flood a valley to create a waterfall for Hydro; kill ducks with windmills or chop up starfish with a tidal turbine, but it's not free and not easy.
It is worthy of more research, but like I said I'd really like to see someone think outside the square and move beyond James Watt's steam engine. _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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Wasn't so good I needed to say it twice. _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006 Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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Apply the same logic to solar energy and it kicks geothermal energy's arse. the only place geothermal wins is the "Always On" bit.
But the "always on" bit is crucial. Only geothermal and biomass can offer that. Solar, wind, tide - all good things, but none of them can provide power when it is needed.
You're obviously a fan of geothermal but I think you're making it seem a bit too easy and ignoring a few points.
To a certain extent, yes. But it doesn't have to be easy to be a winner, because it is pretty much the only game there in town. Nothing much else does baseload, so even if it's quite hard, it is a priority area and we need to spend what it takes to do the R&D.
but you're only getting access to the heat source for free. you still have to build the plant, pipe in the water, trap the steam, use the steam to turn a turbine
Agreed.
Tidal power, you stick a turbine in the water and let nature do it's work.
Yep. But where are you going to put it? I have never looked in any detail at tidal power, but my understanding is that you need some pretty specific - and in the Australian context quite rare - geological features for it to deliver enough power to be more than a tiny sideshow. I should imagine, for example, that the Port Phillip Rip would be good - but are we seriously going to fine even a fraction of the power Melbourne uses there? I doubt it. And there aren't many other spots along the coastline. Half a dozen, maybe.
Solar, you lay out the panels and have a beer while the batteries charge up.
Nope. The cost of the batteries is hopelessly out of court at present. Not even close to practicable. Molten salt is being experimented with (it stores heat pretty well) but it's still too dear. More research required!
geothermal is a nuclear or coal fired plant, without the nukes or coal. I'd like to see us get away from having to boil water to create steam to turn a turbine and get to creating electricity with as few moving parts
Absolutely!
Geothermal might have the smallest environmental footprint
Probably, though I hadn't thought of that until you pointed it out. Solar is the other very good one. Wind isn't so much an environmental issue as a cost and fairness issue (as presently implemented it victimises country people so that city people can have a bigger plasma TV) but that can be overcome with good planning.
One thing we haven't mentioned is the synergy between renewables - hot days have high power demand, and (generally) good solar performance. When the change comes through, the wind generators kick in. And so on. But you still need a reliable baseload. _________________ �Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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