Fragony on 25/1/2010 at 10:31
I won't pretend I understand what this says, but friend of mine says there is plenty of it, and that it can be used for power. Look into things like that instead of spamming windmills, and keep things like as they are for some longer.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterium)
SubJeff on 25/1/2010 at 10:43
Quote Posted by Fragony
The chance one does the boom thing is soooo incredibly small...
...while we would need thousands of windmills. They also have to be made, these fuckers are huge and don't want to know how much metal we would need
I'm not talking about a meltdown omg disaster!, I'm talking about the pollution they create. The more you have the more chance you have of a leak or a seep or whatever.
And as to the materials cost of windmills. Ha ha ha. Have you ever seen a nuclear power station? How much material do you think is in one of those?
Regardless of whether you believe in Global Warming as a man-made issue I'm still all for renewable energy. I don't know that this is the same in other Mediterranean countries (I've been to Spain, Italy, Korfu and Cyprus) but in Israel there is hella solar power on residential buildings. Everyone I visited there had a solar panels. I know quality of sunlight isn't great everywhere, and that panels aren't cheap but like everything - prices will come down and tech will get better. I think this is a pretty useful way to get energy.
Having said all that the First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. I wonder, if we had enough solar, wind and sea power farms would we actually be converting too much "ambient" energy into electricity?
For example; the heat energy from the sun that solar panels use would usually be reflected or absorbed by what it is hitting. That energy, at the moment, is part of the ambient energy cycle. By harnessing solar, wind and wave energy are we removing energy from the environment that actually needs to be there? The wind and sea lose some of their kinetic energy when they drive the turbines/machines don't they? Perhaps our use of it will be insignificant in the grand scheme but I can see a day when the argument flips and we have protests about drawing too much energy from out ambient surroundings.
Maybe I should write a book.
Quote Posted by Fragony
I won't pretend I understand what this says, but friend of mine says there is plenty of it, and that it can be used for power. Look into things like that instead of spamming windmills, and keep things like as they are for some longer.
Wtf? We should look into things you don't understand because your "friend" says there is plenty of it? If you can't understand that wiki then I can confidently say you don't understand most of what you've read re: climate change do wtf are you still posting?
Matthew on 25/1/2010 at 11:07
Quote Posted by Fragony
I won't pretend I understand what this says, but friend of mine says there is plenty of it, and that it can be used for power. Look into things like that instead of spamming windmills, and keep things like as they are for some longer.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterium)
Well yeah, if someone invents a fusion reactor that actually works. Its only use in fission reactors, AFAIK, is as deuterium oxide, a neutron moderator in a heavy water reactor (that still uses uranium for the fuel source).
DDL on 25/1/2010 at 12:58
Er...they ARE looking into fusion, and have been for a long time.
And as it currently stands it's 'promising', but doesn't yet actually produce more power than it consumes. Replicating the core of the sun is not trivial.
Compare that to..say, just dumping a fucking windmill somewhere, technology that we know works, and has worked, for hundreds of years. And needs few moving parts, and can be mass produced fairly easily.
The point is not to simply go "Oh lets put everything into fusion coz it's cleaner!", (not least since it might not actually end up working anyway) the point is to start building as many alternative energy generators as possible, as soon as possible. Wind is tried and tested, it works. Solar is tried and tested, it works. Nuclear is tried and tested, it works.THIS IS WHY THEY ARE MAKING MORE OF THEM. But nuclear plants are not cheap, and need a hell of a lot of tech to run, and also require a ton of uranium mining (which is done by big gas-guzzling diggers, incidentally), and well..uranium isn't an infinite resource. And they have a tendency to also be quite handy for making material for atomic bombs. So they're no good for developing countries or countries full of mentalists, and they're not a long term solution.
Wind and solar are actually pretty fantastic, we just need more of them.
Subjeff: re energy extraction from the biosphere, I'm pretty sure the difference is meaningless in the grand scale of how much energy there IS. After all, energy is constantly flowing in, and there is a fuckton of it. It's not like we'd be burning millions of years' worth of stored energy in a few hundred years, after all. :)
Namdrol on 25/1/2010 at 13:29
Symbolic solutions? :mad:
Climate change I have only the most rudimentary knowledge but renewables and environmental building I've been involved with for years.
I'm currently involved in a 40 kw hydroelectric scheme for where I live, my mate is designing it and I'm doing the grunt infrastructure.
First of what needs to be done with anything being implemented is a life cycle cost analysis.
There are a number of ways of carrying out these analysis, depending upon what criteria you use and how far you wish to go and there's a whole science involved. For instance, factoring in the cost analysis of the equipment used in manufacturing your product and then taking it back a step, the equipment used to manufacture that equipment etc.. but as long as you standardise you can get some meaningful data.
As an example lets take solar panels.
Put simply, this is will the solar panel pay back the energy used in its production/implementation and decommissioning?
In Northern Europe as things stand it is unlikely a solar panel will pay back its costs, they're still comparatively expensive and difficult to manufacture but in southern Europe and the equatorial regions they are superb value.
Looking at wind turbines, a commercial wind turbine has a functioning life of on average 25 years. And a payback time of 20. (Community wind projects have an even better payback rate.)
But a nuclear power station will never ever pay back its production costs because its life cycle stretches to such big numbers we can't comprehend them. It does offer a good medium term pay back though and a better capacity factor (potential production measured against actual) than anything else. It also provides very good base loading (this goes into the complicated realms of national grids and usage, which of course could be mitigated if we followed Buckminster Fuller and joined up the worlds electricity supply! Half the world is dark at any one time!)
So despite failing the cost analysis there are strong arguments for it.
But there are so many good, viable, easy implemented solutions which pass the cost analysis what's the point?
Solar water heating, heat pumps (very sexy tech), solar gas turbines, methane digesters, hydro, wind.
(Oh and by the way, a lot of environmental building is total bullshit when looked at using life cycle analysis.
Reed bed sewage systems? 9 times out of 10 pointless. Change your light bulbs and add thermal mass to your building.)
Fragony on 25/1/2010 at 13:32
@ Dll, I can't rule out any bias of course, but studies here have shown that windmills don't generate nearly enough power, what it does generate is inconsistent, they are expensive to build and maintain (metal fatigue), and according to marine-biologists they make dolphins swim up beaches because low frequency's confuse them but that could of course be untruelol. Now that study only applies for our specific weather circumstances here in the Netherlands mind you, but our weather isn't anything special.
edit @ Namdrol, I can only go on what others tell me but I try to fish from as large a pool as I can, the whole picture is not just the technique being possible but also our economy's being able to take such a hit. Environmental damage is minimal today , at least here and China ain't going to listen, we can go on with this for while without anybody being screwed over anything, and take our time to look at other options should te need arise.
Namdrol on 25/1/2010 at 13:46
Quote Posted by Fragony
studies here have shown that windmills don't generate nearly enough power
When taken alone, no they don't but taken as part of a grid with mixed production, they are a simple elegant effective solution.
Especially when tied in with the (
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10422090-1.html) new battery tech coming out of japan.
(It's all about the storage and distribution, that's our current sticking point btw.)
Oh and I'm biased as fuck towards renewables.
Fragony on 25/1/2010 at 14:06
Any battery acid in it ;) That does look good, things like that work if they work. Go for things like that that it's pretty damn amazing if it does.
