Australia and Canada burn and export lots of fossil fuels - not low carbon.

Try again.

Not only does sustainable infrastructure require carbon to build, you also have to pay for it. Right now all our shifts into renewable energy are absolutely subsidized and dependent upon a dirty energy world. The only way to stop burning carbon in 50 years is to burn a ton now it seems, but we sort of need to stop burning it yesterday.

In any case, Canada is in good shape in a few decades. Lots of Hydro and utilities paid for by exporting energy to America, and theyll be able to still grow food staples. All they need now is a big 40 foot double wall with lasers.

They aren't the same thing.

yup

It's very sustainable (which is obivously why it has such a positive impact on the sustainability index).

Does wind cease to be sustainable because there's a finite amount of steel that can be produced? Of course not, because the amount consumed (compared to the global capacity to provide the resource) is so tiny. Besides... it isn't "uranium" - it's nuclear power (which can also burn other elements and even re-use fuel if there were ever a shortage).

You also screwed up with your knock on Canada. The fact that they burn "lots" of something doesn't hurt them on the list because they produce far MORE power with clean hydro/nuclear. And exporting lost of fossil fuels has zero impact on a measure of their status as a "most sustainable power system".

What the hell does that "status" even mean in a +4C to +10C world? I don't think statuses will be any more important than winning the Oscar when billions of humans start dropping like flies from famine.

How is that any different from saying that there's no point in my riding a bike to the office or reduce my carbon footprint? You're going to come along and say "What difference does it make being one of the best in a bad lot? We're all still doomed anyway!" ???

If you think there isn't a thing that we can do that will make a bit of difference... that's fine. You're entitled. But please go sit in a corner and wait for the end. You accomplish little taking a dump on groups that are at least trying to recognize the countries that are doing the best ameng that bad lot.

But among things we can and should be doing, I do not necessarily find that activities that increase aggregate global atmospheric CO2 any more are beneficial.

How is that any different from saying that there's no point in my riding a bike to the office...

If you think there isn't a thing that we can do that will make a bit of difference

You accomplish little taking a dump on groups that are at least trying to recognize the...

Big surprise:

http://www.worldenergy.org/about_wec/partners/default.asp

Once again... "Imported" does not equal "unsustainable"

Nor, frankly, does "imported" mean "can't produce it here". It just means they produce it cheaper.

not fossil, not uranium.

duh

yup

yup

yup

While trying to argue that thousands of years of thorium isn't enough to be "truly" sustainable, you've lost.

If we as a species can prevent our civilization from collapsing over the next century and keep our technological society intact, we'll have developed affordable space exploration technology by then. With that, energy and material constraints become meaningless with regard to sustainability on any reasonable human timeframe.

thanks for the kick. This thread's title rocks.

I guess the sooner that happens, the quicker to a real sustainable world (a world that produces a die-off mind you). Keep your fingers crossed folks

yup

Nope

(Thanks for kick)

from around the plant. Chernobyl death toll: 985,000, mostly from cancer.

Let's reference a reputable source, like the World Health Organization:

"5 September 2005 | Geneva - A total of up to 4000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (NPP) accident nearly 20 years ago, an international team of more than 100 scientists has concluded.

As of mid-2005, however, fewer than 50 deaths had been directly attributed to radiation from the disaster, almost all being highly exposed rescue workers, many who died within months of the accident but others who died as late as 2004."

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/index.html

Does that make solar not sustainable in much of the world? No, it just means we live in a global economy where it is cheaper and more efficient to mine and export from one part of the world than to pull it out of your own backyard.

As the price for materials goes up, it becomes economically viable to mine the materials from your own nation. That's what's going on with rare earth metals now, and what would occur if the price of fissile materials like uranium and thorium spiked up.

Try again.

yup

dysprosium, terbium, europium, neodymium and yttrium

yup

And indeed, some rare earth elements are required for solar panel production:

http://phys.org/news/2012-09-rare-earth-metals.html

Try again

Duh

If Canada builds its sustainability by exploiting system processes in other regions that destroy the globe, then their fate is sealed along with everyone else.

All these touted developments in sustainability are only made possible by burning carbon elsewhere. Sure, we cannot deny the progress of Germany's green infrastructure, but it will not help them eat in 50 years when viable growing regions across the entire globe shrink.

So in conclusion, I shit on any isolated example of sustainability that could not be made possible without increasing aggregate carbon emissions in the larger system (namely, the globe). Its a pointless carbon shell game that is aimed at nothing more than giving people greenie back-pats while the world burns.

As someone who has lived in the Intermountain West, specifically in an area where hydroelectric is the principal form of power generation, I can tell that there are huge environmental costs involved with dams too. In no ecological way should they be considered "sustainable."

The costs are not so obvious, but they are very real. And of course with the droughts that accompany global warming, there is less water behind the dams anyway.

Chernobyl and Fukushima notwithstanding, nuclear is preferable to every other baseload power source.

Last edited Sat Dec 8, 2012, 08:57 AM - Edit history (1)

I just skipped it because I thought it had been well covered already.

If the pharaohs in Egypt had had nuclear reactors, they would have been out of operation for millennia but we would still be storing their waste.

If Egyptian pharaohs had our carbon output, and had focused their efforts on feeble sources of renewable energy instead of nuclear, life on Earth would have gone extinct 1,500 years ago. No one would be alive to be contaminated, and all that dangerous waste would go to...waste.

Perspective counts.

Renewable energy is only "feeble" because we have spent very little time or money trying to develop it. It was "too expensive" partly because of economies of scale and partly because gas and oil were too cheap (nuclear was never cheap, or certainly, "free&quot .

At the very least, we should take the subsidies and tax breaks back from the fossil fuel and nuclear industries (we insure them because No One Else will), and turn it over to sustainable technologies. And then start charging prices for gas and electric and nuclear that truly reflect their costs, as in damage to the environment and public health (What do you think the Real Cost of Fukushima or the Gulf spill will be? And who will bear most of it?)

Then we would see which industries were worthwhile.

That said, we should have started this decades ago and we are in for a world of hurt trying to do it now. But it will only get worse if we don't.


Edited for grammar.

Renewable energy is feeble because there's not enough of it. People can put solar panels on their roof and it helps a little - but all the wishful thinking in the world doesn't change physics, and the physics says there's a limit to how much energy sunlight and wind can possibly provide. It's well short of what we need.

All of the scenarios which renewable advocates like to trot out display a fundamental lack of knowledge of the physics involved. Yes, it's true that if we covered Arizona with solar panels, it would be enough energy to power the country. The panels would cost something on the order of a quadrillion dollars, or 100 years of our entire annual budget. Then there's transmission - building out towers, transmission lines, transformers, and the losses sustained in moving that energy all the way to New York. Then there's storage, because sometimes it rains even in Arizona.

It will never, ever happen.

For ever success story in renewables, there's the hidden story of the natural gas buildout or the coal plants that come online to back it up when the sun isn't shining, or the wind isn't blowing. That's why Germany's carbon intensity, or the ratio of carbon output to the amount of energy they generate, has gone up as they move to solar and away from nuclear. And they've increased energy imports from the Czech Republic and France, most of which is nuclear. The German "ban" on nuclear is a fraud, and it's making a bad problem worse.

Per kWh the wind production tax credit is many times what subsidies to the nuclear industry are right now. A large part of the cost of nuclear comes from fearful, ignorant activists who deliberately drag out the approval process. In the case of Shoreham, that process cost Long Island Electric $1 million dollars every day when activists stalled the project by reading lengthy articles from magazines at hearings. It was abuses like this that succeeded in killing the project after it was completely built.

The damage even the worst nuclear accidents cause to the environment has been greatly exaggerated. When real scientists, using real data, calculated the fatalities from Chernobyl they came up with 4,000, or about one-fifth the number of people killed by coal every year in the United States.

That's what I mean about perspective. There's not enough reason, not enough money, and not enough time to "see" which industries are worthwhile when the science makes it abundantly clear.

whereas mine are predicated on what we could do if we only tried, harder.

That said, I still take great issue with "The damage even the worst nuclear accidents cause to the environment has been greatly exaggerated."

Real scientists? Using real data? "Real" scientists here in the US have stated that NO deaths "resulted" from Three Mile Island. It seems that none occurred within the days of the actual crisis. Are you saying none resulted from TMI, period? Similarly, calculated deaths from Chernobyl go from a low of 4000 (which you quoted) to HALF A MILLION.

And those are only the human deaths. The hidden and un-recorded or reported deaths and environmental damage are far higher.

Maybe you need to become more fearful.

I've never tried, because I know it will never ever happen. It's physically impossible.

There have never been any proven fatalities from TMI, and there likely never will be. That doesn't mean there have been none. My personal belief is there probably were some that fell under the statistical radar, maybe up to ten. The power that TMI generated, if it was generated by coal, would have resulted in hundreds of deaths. Again, perspective.

By way of comparison, the nation's worst nuclear accident is probably one you've never heard of. It happened in 1959 at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Simi Valley CA, about 20 miles upwind from where I live. A 2006 study determined it released 458 times as much radiation as TMI, and resulted in up to 1800 cancer deaths in the San Fernando Valley. At the time it happened, television news had not really glommed onto the fact that they could keep housewives glued to their sets by making things sound much worse than they actually were. For the most part, news was just...news. So life went on. I suppose I could get worried about it, but statistically I'd be far worse off living in western Pennsylvania or West Virginia and breathing coal smoke.

4000 is actually the highest credible number available for Chernobyl deaths. All the "900,000 casualties" nonsense were by "scientists" paid by the Republic of the Ukraine and other neighboring republics to get state aid from the USSR.

No, I don't need to become more fearful, nor do you. Fear is an absolutely awful condition to be in when you're making important decisions.

I don't live in fear. Nor do I deny that reasonable cause for it exists. Nor do I believe what some government agency with skin in the game tells me. Sorry to say, those agencies and their studies don't have my best interests at heart, and haven't for decades.

There is very little or nothing I can do to influence "important decisions" except my own. I've made them. I hope you don't live to regret yours.

but as you admit, your mind is closed. And frankly discussion with someone whose mind is closed is boring. I'll leave with this:

Chernobyl: the true scale of the accident
20 Years Later a UN Report Provides Definitive Answers and Ways to Repair Lives

Joint News Release WHO/IAEA/UNDP

5 September 2005 | Geneva - A total of up to 4000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (NPP) accident nearly 20 years ago, an international team of more than 100 scientists has concluded.

As of mid-2005, however, fewer than 50 deaths had been directly attributed to radiation from the disaster, almost all being highly exposed rescue workers, many who died within months of the accident but others who died as late as 2004.

The new numbers are presented in a landmark digest report, “Chernobyl’s Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts,” just released by the Chernobyl Forum. The digest, based on a three-volume, 600-page report and incorporating the work of hundreds of scientists, economists and health experts, assesses the 20-year impact of the largest nuclear accident in history. The Forum is made up of 8 UN specialized agencies, including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA), United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), and the World Bank, as well as the governments of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine."

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/index.html

Solar is still not competitive, wind is recently become extremely competitive- kwh cost to generate, levelized cost operation over 20 yrs. Both are trending down in price. In another 10 yrs solar will probably be the cheapest new construction electrical generation on the planet, for now its wind.

The two go together, and as a pair they're not renewable.

@ 3.3 to 6.5 cents per kwh wind is the cheapest new cost to generate on the planet.

On Earth, onshore wind is higher than coal and about a third higher than natural gas; offshore wind is 4x as expensive as natural gas. Solar is twice as high as nuclear.

http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/electricity_generation.html

(Table 1)

It should be common knowledge that the prices of solar and wind power have been trending down and have been competitive for a few years. Now it appears that wind power is the cheapest electricity available on the planet. A study released in December of 2011 indicates that the cost to generate of wind power is between 3.3 cents per kWh and 6.5 cents per kWh, I live in New Jersey and we pay about 18 or 19 cents.

At a time when the Atlantic Wind Connection looks to start construction of a 350 mile long HVDC trunk line 15 to 20 miles off the east coast, between NJ and Virginia, that would support 1750 4Mw turbines... and HVDC projects in the North Sea are starting to roll, capital is starting to respond to the price points of wind power.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/19/1101316/-Berkeley-National-Laboratory-Wind-is-cheap-less-than-7-cents-Kwh

Direct link, please. Don't have time to chase down your link chain.

The PDF has nothing to do with the levelized cost of wind power, and looky where "GreenTechMedia"'s links end up:

[link: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/articles/read/can-wind-bring-its-costs-down/|
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/articles/read/can-wind-bring-its-costs-down/]

100% bullshit.

and your sourcing would get an F in any 8th-grade science class.

But that's par for the course with solar advocates.

Why don't you read the article, and show me where they back up their numbers? Because they don't.

It's all self-promoting bullshit.

The most reliable figures I've seen have wind power at about 5.0 cents per kwh.

Even at 3.3 cents; your most optimistic figure; that's NOT the cheapest electricity on the planet.

Coal power plants make electricity at about 1.8 cents per kwh, and nuclear power plants make electricity at 1.9 cents per kwh.

You are off by a factor of TWO in your concept of what is cheapest.

PamW

Wtusic just posted an IEA link that shows LCO prices for NEW Generation.

http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/electricity_generation.html

http://www.democraticunderground.com/112715268#post13

It all depends on what the assumptions are for these future predictions.

For the nuclear plants, if one assumes that we do nothing with our licensing, and we allow people who oppose the nuclear power plants to drag out the construction process for decades; then nuclear power will be very expensive.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Congress could write the laws such that if you oppose the plant, then you can be heard by the NRC with an appeal to the Court system. However, once the Courts have made their decision and the NRC has issued a license; then you don't get to drag out the process with multiple filings of lawsuits.

It's kind of like the words of a person who is officiating at a marriage and says, "..anyone who knows of a reason why these two should not be joined, let them speak now or forever hold their peace".

You get to speak up at the marriage; but if you don't, then you "forever hold your peace"; you don't get to complain or file lawsuits.

Nuclear power is capital intensive, and the cost of nuclear power is really dictated by the carrying charges of the capital needed to build the plant. Therefore, the biggest factor in determining the cost of nuclear generated electricity is due to the delays.

If delays are not permitted, then nuclear power can be very cheap. If you let the malcontents file lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit, even though they lose the lawsuits; they "win" in the end by making nuclear power very expensive, and then they complain about the cost.

You don't get to complain about something that you helped cause.

PamW

and the storage of the contaminated structure?

we are crazy to mess with it
also it is not cost effective
especially if I have to pay for the insurance

from rm 105