Power – or - renewable or not completely renewable energy.

[Las Palmas]

Instead of destroying posts asking questing for other things, I suggest that those of us who think that the energy debate is ruining too many of the posts that were not meant to be about how to keep the planet in best possible state for the generations after us. Not all of us think only about ourselves and not all of us are greedy in this forum. I believe that most of us actually want to leave the planet in as good a condition as possible for our children and our children’s children; etc…

[Las Palmas]

The most reliable power source that is constant is little used for reasons I do not want to comment on.

https://www.energyvoice.com/renewables-energy-transition/339937/o2-tidal-turbine-orbital-marine-orkney-worlds-most-powerful/

Have mentioned this before in a forum that was not supposed to be about renewable energy and I apologize for that.

[Las Palmas]

Also, this is supposedly in the wrong forum as I think more than the CT200h people could be interested in keeping the world in as good a state as possible.

 

Global moderator: Please move this to the correct place.

 

[Spacewagon52]

The only down side to tidal energy is the initial cost. The large one they have just opened has been designed so that maintenance is much cheaper.

Very impressive design.

[Las Palmas]

17 minutes ago, Spacewagon52 said:

The only down side to tidal energy is the initial cost. The large one they have just opened has been designed so that maintenance is much cheaper.

Very impressive design.

It is definitely cheaper to use water power in countries like Norway and Sweden (and many other places where it is running down mountains) but not all countries have such energy available. That tidal energy is only starting to be evaluated and of interest now is strange as that is a power that has always been here and smaller power plants for a couple of hundreds households are not that difficult, gigantic and expensive. Many islands could have power without large cables.

[Las Palmas]

 

 

[Spacewagon52]

Are you familiar with the book Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher?

Written in 1973 I believe(?)

[Las Palmas]

24 minutes ago, Spacewagon52 said:

Are you familiar with the book Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher?

Written in 1973 I believe(?)

No

Used to read books, but no longer have the time.

[Las Palmas]

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/28/world/green-hydrogen-climate-explainer-blue-gray-intl-cmd/index.html

[Herbie]

The one sure thing I know is that so-called "green energy" is mostly anything but.

[Malc]

am I right in thinking that the Royal Household was a very quick upfront starter in harnessing the tidal energy from the Thames at Windsor / Eton way ?

Malc

[Las Palmas]

That is how green energy works because we have stupid politicians that are listening to influencers/lobbyists instead of using a brain they should have. Influencers/lobbyists have many other names and some of these names make them sound as if they are serving the public instead of the economy that is paying them.

Unfortunately, the politicians are elected by us so who can we blame?

Do not tell the fans of electric cars such things. They may come haunt you in your dreams.

Electric cars are promoted by idiot politicians and think about replacing the world car fleet with electric cars. There is not enough material in the world to make the batteries, and the waste when they no longer can be used is as bad as nuclear waste. Maybe a bit less poisonous.

Hydrogen is not YET green, but it is maybe the only energy that can become green of these we have available today.

 

 

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have many other names and some of these names make them sound as if they are serving the public instead of the economy that is paying them)

[Las Palmas]

UK has problems with fuel.

Spain and other counties have problems with electricity.

 

Prices for electricity has doubled and here we are told price will continue up.

Some of the politicians here have softly been suggesting building atomic power plants. Very softly.

While electricity from atomic plants is relative clean, the leftovers are not. Those speaking positive about A power are either thinking that we can develop a way to reuse the dangerous leftovers or think that leftovers are a problem for coming generations that can pay for the way we live.

[DBIZO]

37 minutes ago, Las Palmas said:

UK has problems with fuel.

 

 

Spain and other counties have problems with electricity.

 

Prices for electricity has doubled and here we are told price will continue up.

 

Some of the politicians here have softly been suggesting building atomic power plants. Very softly.

 

While electricity from atomic plants is relative clean, the leftovers are not. Those speaking positive about A power are either thinking that we can develop a way to reuse the dangerous leftovers or think that leftovers are a problem for coming generations that can pay for the way we live.

 

Everything has its trade-offs, but it's illogical to say nuclear is a non-starter simply because of the radioactive waste. There is immense environmental and public health damage from all the coal and oil burning plants that are still around because we have not replaced them with nuclear, and cannot reduce the reliance on them with intermittent renewables fast enough. Moreover, like it or not, intermittent renewables will require 100% backup either in the form of coal and gas or unfathomable amount of energy storage infrastructure. We talking about ongoing damage in the forms of climate change, respiratory diseases, accidents - all adding up to tragic numbers in deaths. How many have died from nuclear waste disposal?

Besides, it's a false choice between nuclear or no nuclear in its current form. There are technologies such as molten salt reactors that are readily available with sufficient support by energy policy. Such technologies are inherently safe (negatively unstable), leave much less waste behind, and their fuel is much more abundant and lower risk to begin with due to weak radioactivity (thorium). Because of this they are not high value targets for terrorists anymore. These features also make them much less costly (probably third-to-half) than current nuclear, due to the lower safety engineering and environmental protection overhead.

Got plenty of hydro? Great. Geothermal? Fantastic. Wind and solar? Absolutely, for marginal generation on top of baseload, off-the-grid uses, storage topup etc. Baseload for most locations? Nuclear, unless you want to keep pumping gigatons of pollutants and GHG into the atmosphere.

[Herbie]

Yep, given what's currently available, nuclear is the way to go.

We seem to be happy to buy lots of tizzy from France which has a lot of nuclear and as I type this, 79.89% of their current demand is being met by nuclear, but it would seem that we don't want the reactors on our soil.

[Las Palmas]

2 hours ago, DBIZO said:

Everything has its trade-offs, but it's illogical to say nuclear is a non-starter simply because of the radioactive waste. There is immense environmental and public health damage from all the coal and oil burning plants that are still around because we have not replaced them with nuclear, and cannot reduce the reliance on them with intermittent renewables fast enough. Moreover, like it or not, intermittent renewables will require 100% backup either in the form of coal and gas or unfathomable amount of energy storage infrastructure. We talking about ongoing damage in the forms of climate change, respiratory diseases, accidents - all adding up to tragic numbers in deaths. How many have died from nuclear waste disposal?

Besides, it's a false choice between nuclear or no nuclear in its current form. There are technologies such as molten salt reactors that are readily available with sufficient support by energy policy. Such technologies are inherently safe (negatively unstable), leave much less waste behind, and their fuel is much more abundant and lower risk to begin with due to weak radioactivity (thorium). Because of this they are not high value targets for terrorists anymore. These features also make them much less costly (probably third-to-half) than current nuclear, due to the lower safety engineering and environmental protection overhead.

Got plenty of hydro? Great. Geothermal? Fantastic. Wind and solar? Absolutely, for marginal generation on top of baseload, off-the-grid uses, storage topup etc. Baseload for most locations? Nuclear, unless you want to keep pumping gigatons of pollutants and GHG into the atmosphere.

You are convincing. And partly right.

How many have died from nuclear waste is hard to say, but look at the leftovers in the Thule Air Base that have been leaking since the accident and seems not to be possible to clean. The local population that used to live from fishing and hunting in that area are not happy with no longer having access and those who got ill from being there are seldom mentioned.

How many have died from obtaining rare earth for Battery storage of power is also not easy to find out.

[DBIZO]

51 minutes ago, Las Palmas said:

You are convincing. And partly right.

 

How many have died from nuclear waste is hard to say, but look at the leftovers in the Thule Air Base that have been leaking since the accident and seems not to be possible to clean. The local population that used to live from fishing and hunting in that area are not happy with no longer having access and those who got ill from being there are seldom mentioned.

 

How many have died from obtaining rare earth for battery storage of power is also not easy to find out.

 

I'm am not all being cavalier with environment and lives lost to nuclear pollution. However, it is wholly irrational, although very human, to fear something more just because it's more dramatic and tangible than the more abstract notion of climate change, air pollution or the vast environmental destruction of the 'new energy' industry in far-away places. On balance, we, the people, seem to be more content with guaranteed environmental and health damage than taking on a managed risk of avoiding it. One must wonder how bad it needs to get for to be bad enough for people to change tact. Looks like much much worse before anything changes.

[DBIZO]

2 hours ago, Herbie said:

Yep, given what's currently available, nuclear is the way to go.

We seem to be happy to buy lots of tizzy from France which has a lot of nuclear and as I type this, 79.89% of their current demand is being met by nuclear, but it would seem that we don't want the reactors on our soil.

Delivering energy at 1/5th of the GHG intensity of the UK's grid....one must wonder how renewables have any credibility left as a policy target...

One extreme alternative I can think of could be to overbuild intermittent renewables so much that when the conditions are right, they have spare capacity to produce 'green' hydrogen for heating, transport and backup power generation - enough to bridge long winter lulls, when often there is precious little wind or solar generation for days. 

It all can be modelled. Unsure about cost, but the size of the total infrastructure would be rather insane to build and maintain - it's very low density. It's probably something like increasing wind capacity fivefold, would be interesting to know.

[Las Palmas]

One of the most reliable powers here are the tide, and though a Norwegian thought about getting electricity from that very long time ago instead of blocking the rivers and damaging the trails to fish breeding grounds (salmon etc.), so far nothing has come of that.