The Green New Deal

The Great Zaganza said:
same argument has been made about the moon landing.
I see the quest for Fusion Power or the ultimate collider as the means to put money into basic research. Even if it comes get you there, along the way we will have discovered some new things.
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JoeMorgue said:
That's why I'm of the opinion that on a long enough time scale we'll probably get there, by the time we do it's nearly inevitable that another form of energy will already have established itself as the backbone of our energy infrastructure.

It's like a.... horse buggy made of carbon fiber. There's no reason it wouldn't work, no reason you couldn't make one, and it would be a better horse buggy but the time you reach the point where you can make a carbon fiber horse buggy... you're no longer using horse buggies.
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I'm not that optimistic about fusion. In fact, I'm very pessimistic about it. In contrast, I'm substantially more optimistic that Liquid Molten Salt Thorium reactors could power ALL of the world's energy needs for a millions of years and NOT burn a single molecule of carbon.

No fusion reaction on Earth HAS ever lasted more than maybe a minute and never produced more energy than was put into it. In contrast a experimental Liquid Salt Thorium Reactor ran for 4 plus years in the Oak Ridge National laboratory.

My question is why we would spend billions of dollars on a project where we have solved maybe 10 percent of the problems(Fusion) vs a project that has solved 80 percent of the problems(LFTR)?

In either case, those unsolved problems might prove that either or both are unworkable.

But I'm betting on the one that ran for 4 years.
 
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Delvo said:
There's no excuse for failing to invest in both.
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But we're barely investing in either and frankly we are spending a lot more on fusion.

Hell, we're spending more on trying to safely store spent fuel than we are on developing LFTR technolgy which has the potential of allowing us to dispose of 99% of that spent fuel generating electricity and creating valuable isotopes for medicines and other uses.

There's a real insanity about nuclear energy and I hate to say this, but I blame the media's fear mongering. Radioactivity can be highly dangerous, but there are a million variables from the type of radioactivity to the amount. And those variables make the difference between deadly and totally harmless.

We're all bombarded by the Sun every day with radiation. There is radon coming up from the ground. The pretty granite countertops in so many kitchens are almost all radioactive but nobody is or should be panicking about any of this.

There is a limited amount of research and development dollars and priorities ARE made.

I'm just saying, why bet the farm on the long shot?
 
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theprestige said:
There's a time and a place for everything. Coal empowered the industrial revolution, which generated unprecedented amounts of surplus wealth, which in turn was invested in the foundations of just about every good thing civilization has produced in the past few hundred years.
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And everything bad too.

We wouldn't have global trade.
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Nonsense - we had global trade well before coal replaced wind power.

Coal may be worse than nuclear, but it's a damn sight better than wood, and wood was the only other option when coal came on the scene.
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No, it wasn't. There was also muscle power, wind power, water wheels... and other technologies that could have been developed if coal wasn't available. But more importantly, we might have leaned to live sustainably rather than creating an even bigger problem down the road.

Without the quantum leap forward in productivity we got from coal, we wouldn't be in a position to talk about alternatives like solar and wind
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The increase in productivity didn't create new technologies, it just allowed the population to grow at an unsustainable rate. The Industrial Revolution gave us cheap consumer goods, cities full of people living in squalor, and two world wars.

But if you were to tell me, let's get rid of coal because coal is evil... Well.
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Not evil, dirty.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
And everything bad too.

Nonsense - we had global trade well before coal replaced wind power.


No, it wasn't. There was also muscle power, wind power, water wheels... and other technologies that could have been developed if coal wasn't available. But more importantly, we might have leaned to live sustainably rather than creating an even bigger problem down the road.

The increase in productivity didn't create new technologies, it just allowed the population to grow at an unsustainable rate. The Industrial Revolution gave us cheap consumer goods, cities full of people living in squalor, and two world wars.

Not evil, dirty.
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I'd disagree with some of your analysis.

The burning of coal has been a major energy source for 250 years. The industrial revolution was fueled mostly by the burning of fossil fuels and a large percentage of that has been from coal. It kept people warm and powered steam engines on trains and ships. It generated electricity and powered many a factory during that time. It has greatly raised the standard of living everywhere from India and China to the UK and the United States.

That said it is very dirty and has killed millions of people both from the mining to the burning of it. But solar and wind cannot replace it. They at best can only replace a fraction of the energy we get from coal.
 
acbytesla said:
That said it is very dirty and has killed millions of people both from the mining to the burning of it. But solar and wind cannot replace it. They at best can only replace a fraction of the energy we get from coal.
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Solar, wind and gas (LNG) can replace coal (and gasoline/diesel). The next stage is more difficult, to create storage solutions that replace the need for gas.
 
Zambo said:
Solar, wind and gas (LNG) can replace coal (and gasoline/diesel). The next stage is more difficult, to create storage solutions that replace the need for gas.
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No they can't. Nor should they. Natural Gas while definitely cleaner than coal does not solve the CO2 problem.
 
Zambo said:
Can't because there aren't sufficient reserves? Or for some other reason?
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Solar and wind at best can make up maybe 5 percent of the projected world needs. At least considering the technology today. Both are also intermittent power sources. And both are nowhere near as green as people think they are.

Natural Gas might make a dent, but is also a source of greenhouse gases.

Nuclear power is the only known source of energy that realistically (given what we know today) could fuel the entire planet's power needs at a Western nation's lifestyle..
 
acbytesla said:
Solar and wind at best can make up maybe 5 percent of the projected world needs. At least considering the technology today. Both are also intermittent power sources. And both are nowhere near as green as people think they are.

Natural Gas might make a dent, but is also a source of greenhouse gases.

Nuclear power is the only known source of energy that realistically (given what we know today) could fuel the entire planet's power needs at a Western nation's lifestyle..
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China will soon be at 10% for wind and 10% for solar. As I have mentioned before 1000MW solar and wind power plants are up and running. The rest of the energy mix worldwide as an oversimplification is hydro, nuclear or gas. Gas can replace coal.

But then replacing gas is the next stage.
 
Zambo said:
China will soon be at 10% for wind and 10% for solar. As I have mentioned before 1000MW solar and wind power plants are up and running. The rest of the energy mix worldwide as an oversimplification is hydro, nuclear or gas. Gas can replace coal.

But then replacing gas is the next stage.
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I will have to correct myself. The 10% is for generating capacity, but the final contributuon to the annual electricity supplied to the grid is much lower especially for solar. But
 
acbytesla said:
I'm not that optimistic about fusion. In fact, I'm very pessimistic about it.
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I'm very optimistic about it, but not in the near future.

In contrast, I'm substantially more optimistic that Liquid Molten Salt Thorium reactors could power ALL of the world's energy needs for a millions of years and NOT burn a single molecule of carbon.
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Well, except to build it, that is.

No fusion reaction on Earth HAS ever lasted more than maybe a minute and never produced more energy than was put into it.
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No heavier-than-air vehicle has ever flown! ;)
 
Zambo said:
I will have to correct myself. The 10% is for generating capacity, but the final contributuon to the annual electricity supplied to the grid is much lower especially for solar. But
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But... but what? But here's a million dollars? But here's your own spaceship? I mean what the f---


...oh no! They got him!
 
The greatest provider of extra energy has been efficiency: a modern household with phones, computers, TVs etc. still uses less energy than a single fridge 40 years ago.

we have learned to make more with less.
That is why nuclear power, fission or fusion, isn't that interesting, since we can extra energy from far less powerful sources quite efficiently. And with less risk and hassle.
 
Zambo said:
China will soon be at 10% for wind and 10% for solar. As I have mentioned before 1000MW solar and wind power plants are up and running. The rest of the energy mix worldwide as an oversimplification is hydro, nuclear or gas. Gas can replace coal.

But then replacing gas is the next stage.
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Sorry. China has huge coal and nuclear plants coming online. There are 1600 new coal plants still planned or under construction worldwide.
 
Belz... said:
Well, except to build it, that is.


No heavier-than-air vehicle has ever flown! ;)
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And no perpetual motion machines have ever been built either.

I'm flabbergasted at how you're so optimistic that science will find a way to solve the problems that fusion poses which are several orders of magnitude more difficult than molten salt thorium reactors?

And yet my car uses the same sealed lead acid battery they were using a hundred years ago.

Fusion seems to have the same problem it has always had. Containing and controlling 150 million degrees of heat. There's not a material on Earth that can do that. So companies are trying to do it with magnets and lasers. The physics on it are almost all theoretical. Let alone the engineering and material science.

In contrast, the physics of bombarding thorium until it transforms into protactinium and U233 which will fissile is ENTIRELY known. It poses engineering and supply chain issues that are challenging but we KNOW this can be done.

I've read lots of article which say fusion is around the corner. I've been reading them my entire life. And maybe, just maybe they will solve the problems in the lab. They'll still be 10 years away from producing a commercial fusion reactor.

I want to die knowing we have saved the planet from CO2. I don't believe there's an ice cube's chance in hell that fusion can hit that goal. And yet I think there is a strong probability that fission could do that.
 
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