Keeps on climbing......

[chrislancaster]

Evolve

i thought this was a real names forum?

you come across as a know it all and when people offer their opinions you treat them stupid.

If all we need is solar energy. well, get on it. You sound like you have all the answers.


In Hawaii having 365 days of sun i could understand that idea but what about dark cold winter months for most of the world.

Do you plan on storing this power ?

What about evening times when people consume the most how do you harness this energy and release it at will ??

how do people in condos or apartments put enough solar panels on their roofs ?

The same people will need a place to plug in how do you suggest that when millions of people dont have garages?

 

[Jay Gannon]

People need to stop the anti nuclear scaremongering. Nuclear power has changed since Chernobyl, technology has advanced, plants produce less and less radioactive waste, which has a very low half life as we dont need reactors to make nukes anymore.
Nuclear is an abundant relatively clean and relatively safe method of power generation, but its expensive. Very expensive.

 

[Joe D'Arcy]

.....Nuclear is an abundant relatively clean and relatively safe method of power generation, but its expensive. Very expensive.

"..relatively clean and relatively safe..."

hahahahaha Reminds me of modern day oil exploration.

 

[Jay Gannon]

Hence relatively, no current energy production is without risk.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

Concerning numbers...

They are not spot on, they never can be and they don't have to be.

Although it should be pretty obvious that rock in space with stored and limited resources cannot match the energy of a star nearby...and although it should be logical that steamboat powered by burning on-board furniture won't get very far...the point is not in comparing which source offers more power.

Free energy is bathing this planet constantly and no matter how "clean", how "safe" others are told to be, or how "much" it is told can be used...et caetera et caetera...chewing your own planet to live is as smart as chewing your own ass to feed.

"Electric power is everywhere present in unlimited quantities and can drive the world's machinery without the need of coal, oil, gas, or any other of the common fuels."

-- Nikola Tesla

 

[Jay Gannon]

Yes but Tesla is dead and no other mind as amazing as his is here to help us exploit that, no-one even close to his genius.

 

[Jean Déraps]

I'd like to know where all the proponents of nuclear energy are getting their "objective" data on the relative harmlessness of nuclear. BP was also touting their drilling as an insignificant risk. I'm sure you're all consulting the bp.com site now to gather safety data too...

As far as I know, drilling a hole 5000 feet below the ocean's surface to get at oil is child's play in comparison to dabbling with nuclear, which is far more complex and prone to design and 'human error' than oil prospecting will ever be. And the consequences of getting it wrong are much greater. And some company, somewhere, someday, will cut corners to make things cheaper and to finish the project faster...oops, wait, that *was* BP's strategy too! Any time the only thing in sight is the bottom line (and that's what corporations are unfortunately designed for), short-sighted managers and CEO's will compromise almost anything to get their bonuses, cash in the chips, and get out of there. I'm sure most of you proponents would be lining up to build houses next to these plants. Speaking of human error, have you heard about this one? It's concerning the Diablo Canyon plant in California, built 2 miles from a major seismic fault:

"The most famous snafu was discovered in 1981 by a 25-year-old engineer, John L. Horn, who, on the job less than a year, pointed out that for the previous four years, construction crews had been reading an essential engineering diagram for one of the reactor containment domes upside down. That, too, sent PG&E’s construction crews back to the drawing board.

Source: http://www.independent.com/news/2010/mar/04/uncertainty-factor/

I guess we'll just never get the error out of the human. (for a light-hearted take on this see : http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=43051&highlight=i+am+error )

Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking a 100% anti-nuclear stance, although I do think we should explore all other avenues before even contemplating going down that road, but to shrug off the risks of nuclear as being trivial, is in my opinion an unwise stance to take.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

Yes but Tesla is dead and no other mind...

There's enough legacy for plural to do just fine.

 

[Joe D'Arcy]

..chewing your own planet to live is as smart as chewing your own ass to feed.

Sounds like a crappy meal.

"Waiter, this meal tastes like shit."

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

"Your own ass" as in "oneself".

Did grin, though. Makes sense both ways.

 

[Anthony Gratl]

*cough* glassification *cough*.

Part of the problem with Nuclear is that we used to use plants which produced an enormous amount of highly radioactive material because we wanted bombs. We don't have that requirement anymore we can use reactor designs which use fuels which produce far less radioactive by products.

And we're talking about radioactive products which will be inert within 150 years or so and mostly inert within 50. Those are the kinds of timelines we can handle. It's the 10k year timelines that we have trouble managing. (But even those are absurd. Nobody is going to store anything for 10k years. Within 200 years we will almost 100% guaranteed have an inexpensive and simple disposal solution. I hate to kick the can down the road but let's be realistic in the next 200 years material science will without a doubt produce an inexpensive container that can store effectively anything effectively indefinitely. Barring some nuclear holocaust in which case nuclear waste is irrelevant anyway.

The problem with most criticism of nuclear power is that it's criticized for not being perfect. And then all the imperfections of everything else are ignored. "Nuclear plants produce waste." So does the manufacturing of solar cells. Those things aren't made from hugs and rainbows. A lot of very toxic materials goes into manufacturing electronics at present.

You're more likely to have health problems from naturally occurring Argon or receive more radiation from a brick home than from a nuclear power plant. And melt-down-proof plants *ARE* possible.

nuclear fuel byproducts have an equivalent toxicity to manufacturing solar panels?
almost 100% guaranteed?
are you aware that there are cancer clusters around every nuclear power plant? that ain't coming from hugs and rainbows.

Relentless optimism that its all okay in the face of overwhelming scientific opposition is just ridiculous.
What the hell do people have against solar energy anyways?
It's quick to build, unlike nuclear, and pays for itself within ten years, well unlike nuclear. I just don't get the drumbeating for a technology based on poison.

 

[Anthony Gratl]

Evolve

i thought this was a real names forum?

you come across as a know it all and when people offer their opinions you treat them stupid.

If all we need is solar energy. well, get on it. You sound like you have all the answers.


In Hawaii having 365 days of sun i could understand that idea but what about dark cold winter months for most of the world.

Do you plan on storing this power ?

What about evening times when people consume the most how do you harness this energy and release it at will ??

how do people in condos or apartments put enough solar panels on their roofs ?

The same people will need a place to plug in how do you suggest that when millions of people dont have garages?

well i'm not trying to come across as a know it all. And I sure as hell don't have even a few of the answers.
I just happen to passionately believe that we need a better world with renewable energy, and that we should be channelling our energy towards that r and d. The questions you pose are good ones.
There is a solution in advanced battery technology for the partial storing of energy, although this is not the most favorable solution in my eyes.
Current explorations include making the entire exterior walls of apartment buildings out of solar gathering cells.
There are far smarter people than I on these problems.
The point of this discussion is this: we need to stop using technology that is killing us, and that is inefficient. We need to start using energy that creates itself at a point of origin. Wind, solar, and geothermal technology.
In order to make these things work for all, we need to invest MASSIVE amounts of money into R & D. If we can put people into space, and rovers on Mars, we sure as hell can do this back here on earth.
And I'm not telling people they're stupid. I'm saying, lets see the facts and peer reviewed scientific research. If you're going to write that nuclear is harmless, then you should be able to back that up. 'Cause it's kind of important!

 

[Stuart English]

Debating Energy

Debating Energy

are you aware that there are cancer clusters around every nuclear power plant? that ain't coming from hugs and rainbows.

No offense Gavin, but you must work for BP.

Hey Evolve. This has been an interesting thread but what's good for the goose is also good for the gander.

So let's stick to facts, or state "in my opinion", and leave put downs speculation and pseudo-science out of it.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I don't know how hard I want to try to respond here. And you failed to comply with multiple real-name requests, so I guess I'll start typing and see how well that goes before I decide to do something else. Either way, you ignored multiple moderator requests, and we're trying to crack down harder on everyone anyway. So you're account is locked until you clear up the name thing. You're not banned and this isn't personal, just forum policy.

Alright Jeff, I usually respect what you have to say, but this post of yours is pretty much nonsense. Disagree with Hrvoje. Fine. All day long. But show me the facts and stats to say otherwise please.

So his stats are acceptable because he pasted them as an image or something? Maybe I missed it, but was there anything there to substantiate those numbers? I didn't see anything to quantify or support those numbers. I challenged them based on typical power plant outputs, average fossil fuel burning power plants rate their output in Megawatts for actual production, or in Terawatt Hours for annual sales. Not only that, but the global EJ number... How does one derive that? I've seen other such claims from a multitude of other sources. Some higher, some lower. How do we know which one, if any, is correct? I am unaware of any truly comprehensive study to determine such a number that would be acceptable to the global scientific community. Please show me.

Anyway, if we take Hrvoje's numbers, don't know where he got them, but let's look at them. 3,850,000EJ is the equivalent to 3,850,000e18 Watt-Seconds. Right off, that seems pretty fantastical...

3,850,000e18 Joules is the equivalent of 1.069e18 Kilowatt Hours.

The earth has an accepted surface area of 510,072,000km^2. If we assume sunlight only hits half of that at any one moment, we get 255,036,000km^2. Multiply by 1M to get square meters. Divide the 3,850,000e18 by that to get 15095908028.67 Watt-Seconds per M^2 energy received from the sun in one year. I have to call complete BS on that.

That is 4193 Kilowatt Hours per M^2 or a sustained 479 Watts. Or continued average of 240 Watts per square meter of the earth's surface, day night factored.. I'm sorry to be a complete skeptic here, but I have yet to see any indication or proof that there is anywhere on earth that registers that much power from solar energy.

The US EIA places the global estimated power generation for 2006 at 18,014.67 billion KiloWatt Hours.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/electricitygeneration.html

1.069e18KWh / 18,014.67 BKWh = 59,330.52. OK, so according to those numbers, the sun deliveres almost 60,000 times as much power in a year as what the global power generation was from stationary power plants in 2006. Hell, never mind the claim about more power in a day than what man generates in a year. How about more than man generates in a year delivered in about 20 minutes?

Sorry, the numbers don't work and in fact seem to violate quite a few physical laws and acceptable principles. It only takes 2257 joules to vaporize one gram of water at common sea-level pressure. That is .000627KWh. Based on the numbers Hrvoje posted, the surfaces of our oceans should be boiling and snow caps should not exist. Eggs would fry on the proverbial sidewalk in seconds.

Solar panels are only operating currently between 10 and 18% efficiency.
Where did you come up with 90%? Which by the way, would kick the shit out of most of the furnaces in peoples homes.

Define efficiency then. US DOE requirements and ANSI rating standards rate efficiency off of the percentage of energy converted out of the amount of energy captured. Most photovoltaics on the market to day are operating close to 90% when considering the conversion of visible, near-UV and IR captured. I suppose I could've elaborated more in that a great deal of energy remains uncaptured and is mostly dissipated as surface heat. Of course, there's ongoing research into increasing the energy capture, different lensing systems, etc...

As for the furnace comment, that is true for some areas and for older residences. All furnaces I've installed or had installed in the past decade have been 92% or better. The ones in my home are rated 94%. In the municipality where I live, a furnace doesn't even meet code for new construction unless it's EnergyStar 88% efficient or better.

Why, because you shoot video for energy companies?

Actually no, that's not my primary function with energy companies. I do a lot of software consulting and visualizations and stare at hard data and get to see functional prototypes, play with products, etc... But that's a nice big ASSumption on your part. I'm also an engineer by trade and used to work at a nuclear weapons facility. Yeeehaw! And no, I'm not biased towards nuclear power for that reason. I was employed there during the shut-down and clean-up phase headed up by the US Dept. of Energy. Saw and learned a lot about nuclear energy that really opened my eyes. Some good, some bad. The public at large has been grossly misinformed to say the least.

Hydrogen power isn't realistic from a containment point of view. It's way too explosive.

Actually there are several ways to contain it that are perfectly stable in the form of hydrides. But these negate most any benefits to hydrogen as a mobile fuel in that vehicles wouldn't be able to carry enough to provide adequate mileage. As for a replacement for natural gas, it's technically no more likely to ignite or explode than natural gas. It is quite a bit more powerful by volume though. Most such proposals I've seen for piping hydrogen as a natural gas replacement involve a nitrogen mixture. The real problem with hydrogen is the amount of energy needed to produce it.

Nat gas is very finite and polluting.

And yet it's simple to make and proliferates our landfills, some even argue that it's a form of renewable energy. Personally I don't feel that way. It's not polluting if burned properly, unless you consider carbon dioxide to be a pollutant.

Solar is a way. The main way. But not the only way.

I completely agree with that statement.

Nuclear shouldn't happen because we don't know how to dispose of radioactive outputs from the plants.

But what if there were no radioactive waste or byproduct? Believe me, that is coming to the private sector in the near future. I won't say that cutting edge nuclear tech is without its pitfalls. Heavy, and often toxic, metals like lead are a by-product. Lead can be recycled, and used for certain things, but all things considered, what do we do with a large surplus of lead after 50 to 100 years? Yet another problem. We can't simply lock it away in a cave somewhere...

There's nothing to relax about, Jeff. Poison is bad!!! Especially in the water tables. And radioactive material is really poisonous! Perhaps you should enlighten the scientists and engineers who' ve been spending the last 50 years trying to figure out how to store this garbage, instead of writing cavalier nonsense about relaxing.

Funny. That was actually my primary function when I worked at the above-mentioned nuclear facility. Tracking ground water migration and monitored contamination / radiation levels. I also headed up a software team to develop an on-site training and testing application for radiation safety procedures.

Wind power blows? Why are the europeans investing heavily in wind power if it "blows"? Why not explain why it sucks instead of just writing it. If you've got strong opinions on the subject, great, I'd love to hear them, but I'd like the FACTS to back the opinions up!!! Not some rhetorical crap, thanks.

The reason I don't like wind power is windmills are large and expensive and in most places the wind doesn't blow every day. Wind is a geographical commodity and even then is sporadic in most places. I agree that some places are great for wind power. The problem we have here in the USA right now is our government is granting billions of dollars to energy companies to install new alternative energy infrastructure in the form of solar, wind and even geothermal power. People all want wind power and they demand it, they get their elected government officials to push for it. And now we're seeing a proliferation of wind farms throughout the central and southwestern USA that have yet to produce even enough wind power to compensate for the power used in their construction. There's a large wind farm near me, I drive by it almost every day. Only once in a while do I see a wind turbine actually doing something. And statistically we live in a very windy place. Believe me, it's windy here, but that's part of the problem. Most of our winds are very strong, gusty, howling winds that come over the Rocky Mountains and the types of winds that do not play well with large windmills. Most of us in the area really wanted a solar farm -- high altitude environment, typically 300 sunshine days every year, often more. But nope, local government idiots and the power companies gave us windmills. Dumbasses.

I'll admit, I'm biased against wind power for this reason. It's great, clean power (or about as clean as anything we have right now) when installed where it makes sense. I see too much of it being installed where it doesn't make any damn sense or in areas that would be far better served by other technologies. I'm glad wind power is working out in Europe, I really don't know the situation over there. Here in the USA, with only few exceptions, wind power is a big fucking joke.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

That is 4193 Kilowatt Hours per M^2 or a sustained 479 Watts. Or continued average of 240 Watts per square meter of the earth's surface, day night factored.. I'm sorry to be a complete skeptic here, but I have yet to see any indication or proof that there is anywhere on earth that registers that much power from solar energy.

There are different estimates.
I'm not questioning your expertise on the matter but all of this is not neccesary for the point I was making. Vast amounts of energy are available. The type of energy which doesn't require destroying the planet.
Why is this still not harvested in 2010. leads to a different topic.


This and similar debates only lead to an endless loop of time wasting.

"The sun that reaches the Earth's surface delivers 10,000 times more energy than we consume," said Ted Sargent, an electrical and computer engineering professor at the University of Toronto.

link

Over the course of a year the average solar radiation arriving at the top of the Earth's atmosphere is roughly 1,366 watts per square meter[1][2] (see solar constant). The radiant power is distributed across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, although most of the power is in the visible light portion of the spectrum. The Sun's rays are attenuated as they pass though the atmosphere, thus reducing the insolation at the Earth's surface to approximately 1,000 watts per square meter for a surface perpendicular to the Sun's rays at sea level on a clear day.

The actual figure varies with the Sun angle at different times of year, according to the distance the sunlight travels through the air, and depending on the extent of atmospheric haze and cloud cover. Ignoring clouds, the average insolation for the Earth is approximately 250 watts per square meter (6 (kW·h/m2)/day), taking into account the lower radiation intensity in early morning and evening, and its near-absence at night.

link

To put these numbers into a perspective with highly practical relevance, on average, humankind is only using about 1/10,000 of that amount for its total energy consumption. In other words, sunlight seems to be a viable option for our energy needs, at least from the perspective of the total amount needed.

link




No matter how emotional this topic is, potential of filmmaking community is not in on-line debates.

 

[Michael Hastings]

Oil is essentially stored sunlight energy. The problem is that it takes millions of years to create and we are using it all up in a space of a couple hundred years.

Strategically we should be saving as much as possible except for things like airplanes, rockets, etc. where there are limited alternatives, rather than using it all up in day to day commuting, home heating, etc.

Solar, geothermal, wind, etc. are not cost competitive in terms of dollar prices but only because we don't add in the environmental costs and more importantly the long term cost of using it all up in a wasteful manner that could be handled by alternatives.

 

[chrislancaster]

Oil is essentially stored sunlight energy. The problem is that it takes millions of years to create and we are using it all up in a space of a couple hundred years.

Strategically we should be saving as much as possible except for things like airplanes, rockets, etc. where there are limited alternatives, rather than using it all up in day to day commuting, home heating, etc.

Solar, geothermal, wind, etc. are not cost competitive in terms of dollar prices but only because we don't add in the environmental costs and more importantly the long term cost of using it all up in a wasteful manner that could be handled by alternatives.

I think the real problem is there could be up to 200 million gallons floating around in the ocean right now... and the question is ...


is it worth it?

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

nuclear fuel byproducts have an equivalent toxicity to manufacturing solar panels?
almost 100% guaranteed?
are you aware that there are cancer clusters around every nuclear power plant? that ain't coming from hugs and rainbows.

Relentless optimism that its all okay in the face of overwhelming scientific opposition is just ridiculous.
What the hell do people have against solar energy anyways?
It's quick to build, unlike nuclear, and pays for itself within ten years, well unlike nuclear. I just don't get the drumbeating for a technology based on poison.

RED cameras are built out of poisons. Don't just throw one away! But there isn't a cleaner alternative.

I don't really have a horse in this race to be honest, my states produces enough electricity from carbon free sources (including a sizeable portion from Nuclear) to satisfy more than 85% of our needs.

I'm for Solar. I'm for Wind. I'm for Nuclear. But there's a reason that solar only makes up .008% of our current electricity generation.

As to my defense of BP I can summarize it up in two sentences:

"I can't possibly imagine that BP is trying to set a record for going from the world's most profitable company in history to bankrupcy in less than 12 months. Therefore I can only assume that they are employing any and every means at their disposal including the engineers they ignored for the sake of profit in the past to mitigate the crisis and minimize their liability."

As to "Cancer Clusters". Ummm? Proof? I used to live relatively close to the Hanford Nuclear Reserve. And I've participated politically to fight some of the stupid shit they tried to dump into my water. And despite that I still support nuclear power because it can produce constant day/night weather independent power 24/7 365 days a year and only produce minimal waste. Nuclear power got a deservedly bad rap because they built them to produce nukes. They chose what is easily the worst possible reactor design for the sole reason that it created weapons as a by-product.

The amount of radiation that the average coal plant gives off is significantly higher than your average nuclear power plant. Where did I read that? My Environmental Science textbook. Which was FAR from being a nuclear happy pro-oil corporate propagandist rag.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

As to offshore drilling. I believe the bans should have stayed in place and I've always said that it's not worth the risk for such minimal reward. But now that it's happened I think the most qualified people to fix the problem are the people who know the systems inside and out.

In these sorts of situations I find often the technical experts gave sound advice before the accident which was ignored. So now that they are being listened to I view them as the best qualified personnel to fix it.

The BBC had an excellent article in which they took the top suggested solutions by viewers to a drilling engineer and had him evaluate them. Every single one of them was something that was physically impossible, BP already tried or something that would almost certainly make the situation worse.

The 3 words that almost always precede a stupid request from a client are "Can't you just..." Those of us here who aren't experts fall into the category of stupid clients. "Can't you just..."

For instance I thought you could drill into the pipe. Bill Nye says the engineers are setting aside 2 weeks to drill through the casing. I wouldn't have imagined it would take that long. I don't imagine though that they're doing it slowly for some vague nefarious reason. These guys mostly live in Lousiana. They want it fixed more than I do and they have PhDs and years of experience to inform them on the best system to fix it.

 

[chrislancaster]

As to offshore drilling. I believe the bans should have stayed in place and I've always said that it's not worth the risk for such minimal reward. But now that it's happened I think the most qualified people to fix the problem are the people who know the systems inside and out.

In these sorts of situations I find often the technical experts gave sound advice before the accident which was ignored. So now that they are being listened to I view them as the best qualified personnel to fix it.

The BBC had an excellent article in which they took the top suggested solutions by viewers to a drilling engineer and had him evaluate them. Every single one of them was something that was physically impossible, BP already tried or something that would almost certainly make the situation worse.

The 3 words that almost always precede a stupid request from a client are "Can't you just..." Those of us here who aren't experts fall into the category of stupid clients. "Can't you just..."

For instance I thought you could drill into the pipe. Bill Nye says the engineers are setting aside 2 weeks to drill through the casing. I wouldn't have imagined it would take that long. I don't imagine though that they're doing it slowly for some vague nefarious reason. These guys mostly live in Lousiana. They want it fixed more than I do and they have PhDs and years of experience to inform them on the best system to fix it.

i hear bp has over a trillion $$ in unused oil reserves already ..so i doubt they will go bankrupt anytime soon...