Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

This simply shows what I have been saying (Hagens has been saying for 15 years). Energy and economy (and population) are highly correlated almost 1:1:1. The only way to make meaningful reductions to carbon (energy) is to transition to a simpler way of life and come up with a way to form a functional degrowth economy. And have less people to take care of.
 
sendler2112 said:
This simply shows what I have been saying (Hagens has been saying for 15 years). Energy and economy (and population) are highly correlated almost 1:1:1. The only way to make meaningful reductions to carbon (energy) is to transition to a simpler way of life and come up with a way to form a functional degrowth economy. And have less people to take care of.

Indeed, there is a circular dependency... we need massive amounts of energy because we use massive amounts of energy, because we also waste massive amounts of energy because energy is cheap... but we need cheap energy because we use a lot of it!
 
cricketo said:
we need massive amounts of energy because we use massive amounts of energy,
Much of the energy that we need is embodied in all of the raw materials the we mine and process and turn into goods and food and massive buildings, roads and infrastructure that we rely on.
 
sendler2112 said:
Much of the energy that we need is embodied in all of the raw materials the we mine and process and turn into goods and food and massive buildings, roads and infrastructure that we rely on.

And then we throw those things into the landfills and make new ones from scratch. Just think about how much fossil fuel is spent in the agricultural sector.

Roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year — approximately 1.3 billion tonnes — gets lost or wasted. Food losses and waste amounts to roughly US$ 680 billion in industrialized countries and US$ 310 billion in developing countries.

In the US we also like beer. Beer comes in glass bottles. Once we're done with beer, we crush the bottles and make pavement or some other stuff out of crushed glass (that is if we didn't throw it into the bushes while driving). Then we go and make a new bottle from scratch, because energy to do so is cheap and plentiful.

And the scrap we manage to recycle ? Well, it's too expensive to process in the US. Environmental standards, expensive labor... Fuel is cheap and plentiful though, let's throw it on a giant cargo ship and send it to China. Then once China makes silly office chairs (shortlived; disposable) out of that scrap, we can ship them back to the US on a giant cargo ship powered by plentiful cheap fuel.

You get the drift by now.
 
sendler2112 said:
We can't expect to carry on the same as before. Consumption will have to follow production. Not the other way around. Everything will have to change.
well this might delay things a little longer..
Feds Discover Largest Oil, Natural-Gas Reserve in History
In all, the new reserve is said to contain 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, 46.3 billion barrels of oil, and 20 billion barrels of natural-gas liquids, the Interior Department’s U.S. Geological Survey said.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/feds-discover-largest-oil-natural-gas-reserve-in-history/
 
cricketo said:
In the US we also like beer. Beer comes in glass bottles. Once we're done with beer, we crush the bottles and make pavement or some other stuff out of crushed glass (that is if we didn't throw it into the bushes while driving). Then we go and make a new bottle from scratch, because energy to do so is cheap and plentiful.
think laterally....Drink draft beer. ! :bigthumb:
... that comes in reusable kegs.
Or if you must have a take out, buy it in cans... They are 90+% recycled.
Then we go and make a new bottle from scratch, because energy to do so is cheap and plentiful.
Actually , it takes less energy to make new glass than reuse old bottles.
Mostly due to the energy consumed to collect and return all that weight of bottles back to the source brewery
 
Hillhater said:
think laterally....Drink draft beer. ! :bigthumb:
... that comes in reusable kegs.
Or if you must have a take out, buy it in cans... They are 90+% recycled.

You're telling this to the resident of beer capital of the US. I know how to do beer.


Actually , it takes less energy to make new glass than reuse old bottles.
Mostly due to the energy consumed to collect and return all that weight of bottles back to the source brewery

Yep, 2+2 = 5.
 
cricketo said:
No, you can't say the same thing about nuclear. Even if you were theoretically to construct a perfectly safe reactor, which was the suggested that you can't really do, you're still on the hook for handling radioactive materials on the way to/from such reactor, which inherently poses a risk.
So reprocess on-site. But you don't even need to do that; there has never been a fatality in the US from transporting nuclear materials. Never.

Likewise, no matter how much cleaner coal plants are made, you're on the hook to support coal mining operations with their own issues and transportation (another operation proved to have issues) of that coal to destination plants. And yes, underground mining solves one issue in favor of another. How many lives have been lost underground every year ?
15 last year. Per the WHO, at least 52 people die per year from falling off roofs while installing solar.

With PVs, the only thing that comes close to having inherent risks are the kinds of PVs that rely on heavy metals and toxic compounds, but those can be avoided.
Yes, all risks can be avoided. But often they will not be.

Deaths per trillion kwhr, from a 2010 study by WHO:

Coal 170,000
Solar 440
Wind 150
Nuclear 90

https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/09/14/why-the-safest-form-of-power-is-also-the-most-fear.aspx
 
sendler2112 said:
Economy and CO2 are closely linked.
Agreed. And 150 years ago, economy and horse manure were closely linked, since horses provided most of our local transportation. (Google the problems that NYC had with horses - namely, noise, manure and carcass disposal, and the resulting health impacts.)
 
Hillhater said:
Feds Discover Largest Oil, Natural-Gas Reserve in History
In all, the new reserve is said to contain 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, 46.3 billion barrels of oil, and 20 billion barrels of natural-gas liquids, the Interior Department’s U.S. Geological Survey said.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/feds-discover-largest-oil-natural-gas-reserve-in-history/
[/quote]

At the world rate that is 2.5 years for the gas and 1.5 years for the oil discovery.
 
billvon said:
Yes, all risks can be avoided. But often they will not be.

Deaths per trillion kwhr, from a 2010 study by WHO:

Coal 170,000
Solar 440
Wind 150
Nuclear 90

https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/09/14/why-the-safest-form-of-power-is-also-the-most-fear.aspx

That's a fun way to look at the data, but some of it is also correlation instead of causation. Interestingly for Chernobyl they talk about deaths that were directly attributed to acute radiation sickness, but don't talk about health effects and reduced lifespan of people who came in contact with radiation at the levels that didn't kill them fast enough to track. That is understandable, tracking and definitively linking the two is extremely difficult, but to disregard such very likely possibility is also misleading. In addition, there is information that suggests there was a social effect that resulted in additional deaths in form of abortions that otherwise wouldn't have happened.

So yeah, solar is definitely more deadly than nuclear, if you also count the delivery trucks carrying panels causing deadly road fatalities :)
 
cricketo said:
So yeah, solar is definitely more deadly than nuclear, if you also count the delivery trucks carrying panels causing deadly road fatalities :)
Well, you counted coal deliveries, so seems valid . . .
 
billvon said:
Well, you counted coal deliveries, so seems valid . . .

Again, there is a difference. Coal delivery is an integral part of a coal fired power plant. Without coal delivery a plant can't function. Solar obviously doesn't have such pre-requisite.

To make it a fair comparison you have to look at it through the lens of industrial accidents. Comparing deaths resulting from roof top solar deployments to deaths during construction and maintenance of coal-fired plants. Neither would be the result of the type of energy, but they would be related to the activities required to support a particular form of energy generation.

And to my joke about delivery trucks, you'd have to do the same for coal fired plants - road fatalities from construction vehicles participating in construction of a coal fired plant, but not the coal delivery activities.
 
cricketo said:
Again, there is a difference. Coal delivery is an integral part of a coal fired power plant. Without coal delivery a plant can't function. Solar obviously doesn't have such pre-requisite.
You can't have solar power systems without panel (or mirror) deliveries. So it's a similiar issue.

Look, I know you want to make solar out to be better in every way than nuclear. Solar is super safe, so no problems there. But nuclear is even safer. Here in the US, for example, there have been nine fatalities from operating commercial nuclear power plants. None were related to the reactor; they were all things like being electrocuted after falling down a manhole, having a crane drop a turbine part on someone, drowning when a feedwater pipe breaks etc. There are about 50 fall deaths every year related to solar power. They don't break them out any more than that, so we don't know which were during installation and which were due to cleaning or routine maintenance.

In both cases the numbers are very close to zero. Solar will always be a bit more dangerous than nuclear for those "mundane" accidents just because the power density is so much lower. For a 4 gigawatt nuclear power plant you might have a crew of 60 per shift, always ready to fall out a window or smush themselves in a trash compactor or something. And that seems like a lot - but that's 60 people that end up maintaining something that is providing ~100 gigawatt-hours a day. To get the same amount of daily power from solar is going to take a lot more than 60 people maintaining and cleaning the power plants.

But it's pretty meaningless because both are effectively zero compared to coal. And solar provides peaking power and a lot of energy - nuclear provides baseload power that you can't really throttle (so they are terrible peakers.) They complement each other.

The reason nuclear isn't more popular isn't the actual safety issues. It is:

1) People are afraid of them because they don't understand them, and radiation is a scary word.
2) Nuclear power is expensive, even with subsidies.

It would be great to get all our power from solar, wind and hydro. We are a long way from that. In the short term we are going to need baseload power. And for every nuclear plant you open/every coal plant you shut down, you save the lives of hundreds of people a year. Right now that's not factored into any costs, so coal is generally seen as cheaper than nuclear. And that's unfortunate because it will result in a lot more dead people.
 
USA reduced their carbon emissions more than any other country last year. Due mostly to cheap fracked gas pushing out coal.
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47573604_1973926829353086_2115558696527331328_n.jpg

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billvon said:
... And solar provides peaking power and a lot of energy -
.... nuclear provides baseload power that you can't really throttle (so they are terrible peakers.)

.....Nuclear power is expensive, even with subsidies.
You memory is shorter than i thought ! ......we just went through this a few posts back
Solar does not provide peaking power....quite the opposite.
"Peaker" plants supply power on command to suit the prevailing demand
Solar provides power, (sometimes) at a fixed time each day, and demand has to be "managed" to suit solar supply availability
Both solar and Nuclear require associated storage (pumped hydro ?) to support demand peaks, and in many respects Nuclear is better for that due to its continuous 27/7 generation (baseload) reducing the extra demand (less storage ?) for those pm peaks.
Solar also needs storage to allow for weather variations.

As for costs...
Lazard ECOE data puts Nuclear as being much cheaper than Solar ! (Rooftop solar , as that is still where the vast majority of solar power is produced.)

https://www.lazard.com/media/450337/lazard-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-110.pdf
 
billvon said:
You can't have solar power systems without panel (or mirror) deliveries. So it's a similiar issue.

It is not a similar issue. There is initial construction (prior to operation), and then there is operation when power is being generated.

Every type of generating facility has a construction phase which has room for industrial accidents of various severities. In fact there is another fundamental difference there between construction of solar facilities and coal or nuclear plants - solar is never associated with large industrial projects. Both nuclear and coal projects are. For example :

74 people have now been confirmed dead and 2 injured in yesterday's power plant construction accident in Fengcheng City, Jiangxi province.

The onsite search and rescue work ended around 11am local time today with no more casualties being reported, according to China News Service.

Identities of 68 victims have been confirmed, most of whom were woodworkers from Hebei province in Northern China. The youngest victim was 23 years old and the eldest was 53.

Wang Yaosheng, who survived the accident, said he was on the ground when the 70-metre high construction scaffolding fully collapsed over the course of 10 minutes. But all the crew on the scaffolding "fell and were crushed by the steel".

I don't even know if they're talking about a coal-fired plant, or a nuclear one. There is no fundamental difference until we get to the operation phase of it, which will then introduce a new set of risks and possible fatalities.

Here is a properly comparable solar incident :

COVINGTON, Okla. – A construction worker was tragically killed in north Oklahoma this week after an accident at a solar power plant.

Around 10 a.m. on Monday, a construction contractor, identified as 56-year-old Davis Knox, was killed while working at the solar farm project near Covington, the Enid News and Eagle reports.

Authorities told the local paper that Knox was found pinned under a trenching machine.

Officials believe he may have tripped or his clothing may have been caught on the machine and pulled him under.

According to the Enid News and Eagle, there were no witnesses to the accident.

The job site has been temporarily shut down.
 
Not exactly comparing apples there are we ? Chinese construction industry safety standards vs US ..!!
But , it all pales into insignificance compared to the mortalities attributed to lack of energy in developing countries, or even hypothermia /heatstroke in Western countries where electricity has become too expensive for low income sectors of society.
Maybe that is part of the plan to reduce demand .?....make it too expensive for part of the population. !
 
Hillhater said:
Not exactly comparing apples there are we ? Chinese construction industry safety standards vs US ..!!

Safety standards in different countries are a different topic. The comparison above was to illustrate that when comparing safety aspects of different types of energy, one should clearly separate construction/deployment safety / impact and operational safety / impact.

But , it all pales into insignificance compared to the mortalities attributed to lack of energy in developing countries, or even hypothermia /heatstroke in Western countries where electricity has become too expensive for low income sectors of society.
Maybe that is part of the plan to reduce demand .?....make it too expensive for part of the population. !

Did you know automobiles are a significant contributor to mortality in the US ? I think it's all because of fossil fuels. If there weren't for oil and gasoline, there wouldn't be so many cars on the roads resulting in deaths of innocents.

Does that sound ridiculous to you ? Well your comment about mortalities due to unaffordable renewables sounds just as ridiculous to me.
 
Well, the right thing to do would be to clamp down on the energy obese countries and make energy expensive or somehow difficult to use.
So that the ones in the third world don't die for a situation they didn't create. And maybe there'll be a little fossil fuels left for them to not die from hypothermia or heatstroke.

But what about the economy!

Well, i have a solution. Instead of continuing to drive a 5,000lb vehicle to work when evil liberal dictator threw a $2 tax on gasoline, drive a 2,500lb vehicle to work.
Instead of idling the hummer in the starbucks parking lot, how about coming inside for that hour long texting session?
How about growing a little food in your backyard?
Maybe ride a bike a bit if you're able?

Wouldn't this counteract any sort of republican's nightmare like carbon cap and trade? I think so! perhaps it will take a while, but... i think we'll get by just fine.

Our culture is actually the core of our problem. It's not some kind of fall from grace to be a little more conservative with our footprint. We're just spoiled brats when it comes to energy.

I would not count on technology to come to our aid. You see those in industry reaching for some incredibly high hanging fruit and have to wonder how many more innovations they have up their sleeve at the low rate at which we find new solutions today.
 
neptronix said:
Our culture is actually the core of our problem. It's not some kind of fall from grace to be a little more conservative with our footprint. We're just spoiled brats when it comes to energy.

+1
 
cricketo said:
....your comment about mortalities due to unaffordable renewables sounds just as ridiculous to me.
Interesting that you associated the increasing cost of electricity with renewables,..its good to know you at least realise one of the issues.
Deaths from heat/cold are not a rediculous concept to those folk being forced to choose between paying their electricity bill, or buying basic food stuffs (and i mean basic, bread, veg, milk etc)
That is a reality of life to many pensioners, and disabled, or even just low income families, and the link to energy cost has been established
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/9078273/Hypothermia-deaths-double-over-five-years.html
And from the Lancet....
....across 13 countries cold killed 5.4 million people between 1985 – 2012. How many people has coal saved in the last 300 years? Countless millions more than it has killed.
 
neptronix said:
Well, the right thing to do would be to clamp down on the energy obese countries and make energy expensive or somehow difficult to use.
So that the ones in the third world don't die for a situation they didn't create. And maybe there'll be a little fossil fuels left for them to not die from hypothermia or heatstroke.
You are incorrectly assuming that those deaths from heat/cold are a "third world" issue.
Its happening in the Western , developed , world also...BECAUSE energy has become too expensive already.
How does shutting down a Nuclear plant in Europe , help keep anyone cool in Africa ?
Its not a shortage of resources (fossil fuels) that is the problem, its the irrational restriction of available funding for simple effective power generation plants due to the AGW scare.
 
Yes, that happens anywhere. But energy is cheaper than it's ever been in most parts of the world when you adjust for inflation, to the point where most waste it, and then tens ( if not hundreds ) of thousands of people die a year from pollution, so..

So if you care about the poor, give 'em a gas card. Make their heating bill part of the welfares then. Problem solved.
The other 99% of the western world gets to mind their energy a little closer, and grandma dodges dying from the cold.

Grandma lives and so does the person with the lung disorder who has been barely hanging on during the peak pollution month(s)..
 
Its no use comparing energy to inflation, if you income does not increase at the same rate.
In many countries , Europe, Australia, UK, etc ,..electricity (and gas) prices have doubled and trippled in the past 5-10 years. Income has not. Unemployment has also increased.
Many countries already have social subsidies for power bills, but as with any social funding , it is way insufficient !
You forget , that in California you have a very privelidged life style, immune from much of the worlds issues.
 
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