Is western europe’s power grid interconnected and set up for this? Thanks for posting articles that inspire.
edit:
Cool.
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You are attacking a strawman. Small modular liquid fueled reactors are not “giant centralized production” nor do they require “giant centralized reprocessing”.
Straw man?
Small reactors are possible but big centralized installations for power production are financially much more viable. That means the centralized facilities will win out and the small facilities will always be a fantasy. What do you call it when you put forward a ludicrous straw man as a rhetorical distraction? A decoy? Bait-and-switch?
Reprocessing isn’t even possible on the small scale, and you conveniently eliminate that entire major proportion of any fission energy-production infrastructure.
Also, this still isn’t a thread about nuclear power.
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Firstly, “bait-and-switch” is a type of fraud. I’m not sure if you are are trying to ad-hominem me or not, but either way it is not conducive to civil discourse. Please refrain from insults. Secondly, this thread would seem to be about hypothetical solutions to providing electrical power to large populations. I don’t think addressing a reply to a specific person distracts from the larger topic thread, even when the subject is slightly tangential to the main thread. Despite what you seem to think, I am not trying to hijack the conversation. One of the beauties of threaded text (and of this specific software platform; thank you @codinghorror! I must say I rather like Discourse.) is that a minor tangent need not impede the flow of the rest of the conversation. However, you can’t both reply to the content of a comment, while simultaneously trying to shut someone out of the conversation, and then reasonably expect for them to not write a reply back. That leads to extended tangents, which again, I was not attempting to cause. <-- see this paragraph? It should not have needed to be written. /meta
On topic: You know what is a fantasy for reasons of physics? Feed-in of inherently intermittent power sources to a power grid.in significant quantities. Local solar, i.e. at the point of load is great, but as is being demonstrated in Germany right now, when you feed intermittent power back in to the grid it is destabilizing, and in the case of Germany has lead to new construction of many large lignite-fired coal power plants. http://www.science-skeptical.de/energieerzeugung/die-energiewende-scheitert-an-der-physik/009246/
Final response to the tangent you directly extended: You left out the “modular” specification, as in assembly line factory produced, not giant custom forgings. Currently it is a reality that big centralized installations are financially more viable, but this will inevitably change if for no other reason than supply/demand initiated by China. In the past 3 years their nuclear R&D has gone from under 300 scientists with $300M US to being a $1T US program with ~1000 scientists and specialists. As big a program as NASA’s Mercury/Apollo years - or the Manhattan Project; China is aiming to have a functioning LFTR design that can be mass produced within 10 yrs. Exporting their product (especially if first to market) for the benefit of their national economy would in all probability then follow. /tangent
You lead with accusations against me of using a straw man, you’ve been insulting to pretty much everyone you’ve been responding to, then you headline your “knowledge-lay-down” with this? Through it all you haven’t demonstrated any particular connection to the community, though you are clearly an alt created for this particular thread solely to stomp around in full form of internet-commenting-master. If you don’t demonstrate humanity, everyone else is going to be a bit short with you. That’s how it works. When you make no effort on your own, you can’t expect much from others.
At this point I’m not obligated to read farther. If you want people to actually read your points and discuss them (as apparently this long post of yours is intended), don’t be an obsessive, insulting trolley. There’s Reddit for that. But for now I suppose I’ll continue.
The technological answer to that is a little bit science fictioney, for sure, which is your bad because we have actually been talking about the future of solar energy production and distribution, storing and smoothing out the grid… which you attack on one hand while attempting use the fantasy that humans will magically choose the physically and financially less efficient form of your own preferred solution. Again, arguing in bad faith. There isn’t any solid “there” to what you say, in a scientific or economic sense. Yet over and over you claim authority solely to shut people down.
This is a thread of speculation and extrapolation of the science, engineering, economics, sociology, etc., of solar power. I get that you want to derail the topic, but nuclear isn’t the only spur you’ve tried to slap together. You are also attempting to kill the conversation by killing the fun. The fun is what this site is about. You attempted to shut down the speculation and extrapolation on topic, by declaring your own speculations and extrapolations as solid, inevitable truth, while at the same taking a giant dump on the fun we’re having that’s actually on topic. I’m willing to argue speculations and extrapolations on or off topic, but not when you are being so disingenuous and dull.
This sounds like a wonderful topic for a new thread. I look forward to seeing it on the board.
I have responded to exactly two people in this thread. I’ve been insulting? Where? Truly, I am perplexed by this response. Calling out a logical fallacy is a neutral comment. I strive to be as tone-neutral as possible in text because the inherent lack of non-verbal communication can lead to miscommunication. I do not understand this hostility.
You are the only person being short with me. The single other person who has replied to me (@arghanurism), in fact the only person I have actually addressed other than yourself, was civil in his reply pointing out how I had misunderstood the central point of his argument. Thank you @arghanurism for that, I do appreciate it.
“Through it all”? Including this reply, I have made exactly four replies in this thread.
“clearly an alt” “stomp around in full form of internet-commenting-master” ? Again, I do not undertand this hostility, nor cynicism. Of course I haven’t demonstrated any particular connection to the community, I have never commented on BoingBoing before! I have read articles on BoingBoing a handful of times in the past, but until last night I did not even know there was a forum behind the blog. Is this how you treat newcomers? I would expect better of the denizens of a website associated with Cory Doctorow. Please, stop projecting your knee-jerk negative perception and putting words in my mouth. I am not arguing in bad faith.
I’m the one being insulting? I’m “killing the fun”? Seriously? Your entire current reply to me has been in-group/out-group negativity painting me as “Other” If that isn’t “killing the fun” I don’t know what is.
Again, you are simply attacking me personally. Knock it off.
You don’t get to compare someone to a fraudster, then call them an “obsessive insulting trolley” and then pretend that they are the one who is actually making a personal attack. You knock it off. If anyone is being disingenuous here it is you.
That is fake outrage extrapolating from a discussion on what was or was not a straw man, so just you using some essentially nonsensical internet trolley tactics. The mods here actually do their job. Should I ask for a ruling? Would you like to talk about solar for the final few hours this thread is open? Would you like to submit a new thread to talk about the post-scarcity world of advanced fission reactors? At this point it’s up to you.
The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates it would take a solar farm 100x100 miles square somewhere in the American Southwest Desert to provide enough electricity for the entire United States. http://www.project929.com
Here are a couple of articles about putting solar over water in California. This one draws the conclusion (partly by working from a worst-case scenario) that, “Even if the SWP was on board, there’s no way the California Aqueduct could become energy self-sufficient by putting on a solar PV cap, even if we covered the entire length.” Instead, it’s suggested that desert irrigation canals make a better likely starting point for covering water with PV.
This is the NYT article that helps to explain why the DWP doesn’t want to bother with saving land. They’re already building arrays on it.
That land is in areas that people already want to protect.
So really, they should be doing viability studies.
To put this into perspective, the US Interstate system–often called the largest public works project in history, has put down about 10 billion square feet of concrete/asphalt, at a cost of $425 billion. This mere 100x100 mile solar array proposal is talking about constructing 278 billion square feet of solar cell. As a little dot on a map it doesn’t look so big, but when you think about it in comparison to anything humans have built in the past it is unbelievably massive.
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The point of the example solar array area is not to build it. The point is that such an area is sufficient to power all pea EU daytime loads and with storage, more.
The recreation of Euro dependence on Africa/Asia for energy is itself a bad idea.
It can also be looked at as a return to colonial thinking.
The reality is that local solar PV/hot-water is plentiful in many areas, and the French have long demonstrated the ability of nuclear power, even today’s 1946-patent designs, to meet most all needs with no emissions.
The further reality is that there really are only 2 “renewables” – solar & nuclear (geothermal is nuclear). The rest are subject to climate change, as China’s western wind farms and 3Gorges dam, and our US Colorado River dams now demonstrate.
Local solar builds a more efficient, robust grid, with no new land confiscation and no species threats. Nuclear has the highest power density, which is what any environmentalist should consider. Both are as nearly “renewable” as possible – solar until the Sun goes red giant and devours us; nuclear, as long as any rocky/watery bodies exist in any solar system.
These realities are discomfort to those viewing themselves as both ‘green’ and entitled to scientific/environmental ignorance. Thus, others will do the work of leaving a decent environment for our descendants.
We’ve serious problems beyond just climate change & sea rise. Long past time to get serious and recognize what scientists and even a President knew long ago: http://tinyurl.com/6xgpkfa
We were supposed to be done with carbon emissions by about 2000. Oops. Our descendants will rightly spit on our graves, if those can be found.
[mod edit: removed signature]
Apparently this site allows only 2 links per post, so will add a few separately, to keep the web jockey’s boss happy.
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Some refs…
http://tinyurl.com/n2qnos6 (the oncoming extinction event)
Kolbert: “The Sixth Extinction”
http://tinyurl.com/7o6cm3u
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to get around the problem of stringing power lines from the sahara to distant places like the USA, you need to distribute the solar cells to the different areas. But not all areas near where the electricity is needed is as sunny as the sahara. so you need to multiply the surface area of the solar cells by a certain amount to compensate for the lesser sun intensity and less sun hours per day
and what happens when its night time? you need to add a large number of batteries (which is expensive and needs replacement every few years). Since you need to charge the batteries too you need to again multiply the surface area by a large amount
the fastest way to wean ourselves off fossil fuels is a combination of renewables and nuclear power. we need nuclear since renewables are expensive (look at germany’s electricity prices) and renewables dont work 24/7 (look at germany who had to build many coal plants alongside
renewables)
My bad… here’s the actual details, though the quote I’ve got refers to solar thermal instead of photovoltaic. It equates to sunlight hitting the world’s landmass for 2.4 hours.
To put solar thermal generation systems into perspective, the Sun’s energy falling on Australia in one day is equal to half the total annual energy required by the whole world. To power all of Australia’s energy needs would require only 0.3% of the land surface to be devoted to solar power generation.
http://www.science.org.au/sites/default/files/user-content/ausrenewableenergyfuture.pdf
Sun from 2 days of Australia’s landmass = 1 year global energy consumption.
Australia’s landmass = %5 of the world.
So sun from 1 day on 10% of world landmass = 1 year global energy consumption.
So sun on world’s landmass for 2.4 hour = 1 year global energy consumption.
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