The Energy Debate (1 Viewer)

[Darnie]

I'm pretty sure by complete life cycle that they include that. Generally, that's what LCA does.

We can't power the world of hydro and solar alone especially considering how inefficent it is to transport electricity over large distances. i.e. river--> substation.

Hell no. we'd have enough trouble trying to set up another hydroelectric system with all the shit nowadays.

We'd need rain to make them work anyway. I think the Snowy Hydro scheme is down to about 12 percent or something. Fuck all really. and its only an average snow year so thats stuffed.

 

[A High Way Man]

is CO2 the only potential prob with Nuclear tho

 

[Farfour]

No, access tce from your university's journal page. It was written by Daniel Ward. I gave it a citation so you should be able to find it easily. The whole issue is about "tomorrow's energy".

Pretty relevant.

Love engineers

 

[Kwayera]

Hell no. we'd have enough trouble trying to set up another hydroelectric system with all the shit nowadays.

We'd need rain to make them work anyway. I think the Snowy Hydro scheme is down to about 12 percent or something. Fuck all really. and its only an average snow year so thats stuffed.

Not necessarily. There's wave-powered hydro systems in the works (as in the R&D stage) but again those are.. somewhat unfeasible with regards to input/output balances.

 

[Darnie]

yeah i suppose i forgot about that hey. oh well.

fact of the matter is it is impossible to rely on the hydroelectric and solar power systems four our main source of power.

 

[Kwayera]

yeah i suppose i forgot about that hey. oh well.

fact of the matter is it is impossible to rely on the hydroelectric and solar power systems four our main source of power.

Currently. In the future (and I mean the FAR future), once we iron out the creases of cost, feasibility and efficiency (particularly with solar), they could indeed be relied upon as main sources of energy. But not now, and not for a long time coming.

 

[Darnie]

That could be true. but i dont think we have enough of the water on the land, therefore would be relying heavily on the wave powered hydro.

 

[Graney]

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c169/kols_kebabs/clip_image002.gif

Nuclear vs. Other
Needs img tags.

Breakdown of Emissions

Coal – 96% fuel
PV - 72% Materials
-26% Fabrication
Wind - 70 % Materials
- 26 % Operation
Nuclear
- 3% Mining
- 5% Cleanup
- 15% Fuel cycle
- 24% Construct’n
- 15% Operation
- 15% Storage & Disp.
- 24% Decommission

 

[jb_nc]

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c169/kols_kebabs/clip_image002.gif

Wind is awful IMO because it ruins the countryside and it's impossible to get enough land to build it on without doing China style acquisitions (expensive). It's also not a 100 per cent guarantee of energy supply at all times which you need to have a SERIOUS alternative to coal.

Hydro is just not going to happen in Australia without research into those snake wave/hydro devices.

Leaving nuclear. And surely the carbon-cost of storage would have to come down, along with decommission if the plant is built on today's latest nuclear technologies.

 

[Enteebee]

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c169/kols_kebabs/clip_image002.gif


Wind is awful IMO because it ruins the countryside and it's impossible to get enough land to build it on without doing China style acquisitions (expensive). It's also not a 100 per cent guarantee of energy supply at all times which you need to have a SERIOUS alternative to coal.

Hydro is just not going to happen in Australia without research into those snake wave/hydro devices.

Leaving nuclear.

Couldn't we decomission some coal plants, replacing them with current solar/geothermal technologies and then wait it out until better technologies come along for solar etc? The main issue with nuclear seems to be that once you go down that road it's very hard to go back... though I do note recently germany has been decomissioning their nuclear powerplants.

 

[Graney]

The img I posted is not a cost/benefit breakdown for sure.

New nuclear plants are so fantastically safe and clean (excluding the possibility of weapons). Hate anti-nuclear hysteria.

Who will pay for them though. They aren't the cheapest option, NSW can't even afford to upgrade it's coal based infrastructure.

Couldn't we decomission some coal plants, replacing them with current solar/geothermal technologies and then wait it out until better technologies come along for solar etc?

Money is the issue. Too farsighted to fly in the present political climate.

 

[Farfour]

Why don't we just dump billions of dollars into physics and use zero point energy if we're all going to put the hype into hypothetical

 

[Riet]

Prove that wild statement!

Enrichment programs provide opportunity for nuclear weapons? I'm opposed to most weapons, see. Guns, TNT, nuclear bombs, etc.

Yeh, see we're in Australia not Iran. Plutonium is better for making weapons out of anyway, enriching uranium is effort.
Problem with solar is that it's only available during the day, and if you use batteries or whatever, they are fairly environmentally unfriendly and usually require minerals that are mined anyway. People often talk about solar like the panels just appear.

True story: in fluid dynamics we worked out that a hydro plant with a 300m change in elevation (and 1m pipe diameter) produces 5.5MW, as much as 14,000 m^2 of Solar Cells, or the same as like some ridiculous number of windmills with 100m blades. I can't remember the windmill one exactly, but if energy output is determined by mass flow rate (kg/s) then it becomes clear why hydro is so good. It's 750x as dense as air after all.

 

[Farfour]

http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19926634.800

I'm not at all a skeptic of Anthropogenic Global Warming:

Cleaner skies explain surprise rate of warming

* 09 July 2008
* From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues

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GOODBYE air pollution and smoky chimneys, hello brighter days. That's been the trend in Europe for the past three decades - but unfortunately cleaning up the skies has allowed more of the sun's rays to pierce the atmosphere, contributing to at least half the warming that has occurred.

Since 1980, average air temperatures in Europe have risen 1 °C: much more than expected from greenhouse-gas warming alone. Christian Ruckstuhl of the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Switzerland and colleagues took aerosol concentrations from six locations in northern Europe, measured between 1986 and 2005, and compared them with solar-radiation measurements over the same period. Aerosol concentrations dropped by up to 60 per cent over the 29-year period, while solar radiation rose by around 1 watt per square metre (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1029/2008GL034228). "The decrease in aerosols probably accounts for at least half of the warming over Europe in the last 30 years," says Rolf Philipona, a co-author of the study at MeteoSwiss, Switzerland's national weather service.

The latest climate models are built on the assumption that aerosols have their biggest influence by seeding natural clouds, which reflect sunlight. However, the team found that radiation dropped only slightly on cloudy days, suggesting that the main impact of aerosols is to block sunlight directly.

 

[Graney]

There's about 20'000 petajoules stored in serious potential locations for geothermal power plants in Australia.

The technology exists now. The biggest potential geothermal site in Australia, located in the Cooper Pedy basin, holds about 8000 petajoules potential.

Why do we not invest in this. Madness.

No one talks about geothermal energy. Not Peter Garrett.

This is immediately available, clean, cheap, renewable energy.