Global Warming?

[The Valorous]

My thoughts: I do believe there is global warming. However, I believe that what we are experiencing is a part of a natural cycle. Granted, our emissions are abnormally high and have been unusually high since the 1970's. However, do remember that in the 1700's and 1800's, we experienced a mini-Ice Age. So data gathered during that time may be skewed. But again, I believe in global warming... it's just that I don't think it's as much a big deal as many people make it out to be (though it is still a big deal).

If I'm contradicting myself, sue me. I just drove home drunk and I have the permanent image of breasts implanted in my head.

 

[Tentadrilus]

It is common knowledge that we went through an ice age in recent history (recent for the planet)

The last Ice Age ended at the end of the Victorian era here in England, ack-choo-ally.

Also yeah, the Antarctic ice cap is growing as fast as it is melting (the ice shelves on the western side are collapsing, which is what the news picks up on while the east is growing almost exponentially).

 

[CSS]

The liberal galactic media is at it again, now they're trying to tell us that Hoth is melting, well that's just ridiculous!

Serious:

I think global warming is blown out of proportion. Yeah, coal and oil and natural gas are polluting our air, we should switch to nuclear energy. I just did a paper on nuclear energy as our most efficient type of energy versus other alternative types; air, solar, hydro, etc. The only reasons nuclear power isn't headlining our society now is because of the idiots that worked at Chernobyl and 3 Mile Island and dealing with nuclear waste.

 

[Thothie]

Nuclear energy is a sh*tty option actually... Not so much from a safety point of view, but from an efficiency point of view.

It takes over twenty years, on average, to get a nuclear plant on-line, during which you have no energy output, and the pollution and energy you put into the effort over that time, far exceeds the pollution and energy generated by a coal plant, built and running for that same period of time. The coal plant can be ready in less than two years (thus giving you power for 18 of those years), and at less than 1/10th the cost. Therefor, there is no environmental payoff for a nuclear plant for at least forty years, and in all of history, only one nuclear power plant has ever been left running that long.

A solar energy plantation, large enough to be capable of the same energy output as the Nuclear plant, can be made and put on-line in half the time, at the same cost, with a much smaller carbon construction footprint, and a fraction of the long term issues and upkeep costs.

That's all assuming your nuclear power plant comes in on budget. No nuclear plant, anywhere, has ever come in on budget, or even under 300% of budget, much less on time.

No nuclear power plant in the states puts out more than 5% of its recommended output. I don't see this changing just because we build more of them.

With the exception of the smaller ones used for experimentation, no nuclear power plant in the states has ever been really paid for. The companies that built them inevitably went bankrupt, and got scooped up by larger companies or the government. This gives you some idea of what a terrible investment they are. (At least, inside the United States - in the third world, where labor is cheaper, and safety standards more laxed, they maybe more feasible.)

In terms of pollution, various studies have shown cancer rates within ten miles of a nuclear power plant are between 200% and 1200% higher than elsewhere (particularly thyroid and liver). Cancer rates for those who work at said plants are nearly double that. And as for getting rid of the spent nuclear materials...

Odd thing is, we did actually solve the issue of long-term storage of spent nuclear materials once, but for some reason, Congress cut funding to the project. There was once a working experimental nuclear reactor in Arizona that could actually replenish its own spent fuel rods for (in theory) thousands of years, simply by re-irradiating them. Not sure why we abandoned that project, save that maybe it's more fun to rain the stuff down on third world countries via A-10's and tank shells, or sell same said materials to the Israelis to help them commit genocide on what's left of the Palestinians. *shrug*

 

[CSS]

Nuclear power has the highest capacity factors of any type of energy, don't bull shit me by saying solar energy is more rewarding than nuclear energy. Solar energy is just as erratic as every other "renewable" type of energy.

Efficiency wise, nuclear energy is our cheapest energy to produce. It is cheaper than coal, natural gas, hydro, wind. Yes, it is expensive and it takes long to produce a nuclear power plant, but I'd be questioning the construction if a nuclear power plant came up in a year. Maybe the reason they take so long is to ensure that there is no possibility for malfunction. It takes nearly 3000 wind turbines to equate that of one nuclear power plant, granted they are 1 MW wind turbines, and the power plant is 1000 MW. Wind turbines average about 33% capacity factor and photovoltaic solar panels average under 20%. wiki Thermal solar farms have much higher factors, and are the most feasibly efficient alternative, granted you generate enough heat during the day to last the night!

Sure, wind and solar can be constructed much faster than nuclear, but they take up a ton more space. 3000 Wind turbines or 1 nuclear power plant?Only 1/3 of the USA has the correct conditions for wind farms (as well as along the coastline which they are starting to implement now).

Not to mention the strobe effect you get from turbines if it inbetween you and the sun, I feel sorry for the people that have to deal with that in their homes because of nearby turbines.

Nuclear power plants are govt. subsidized.

That is the first time I have ever heard of cancer studies... source?

 

[Thothie]

I think ye are confusing the promise of nuclear power with the reality of the thing.

If you had a magic wand that could manifest fully constructed nuclear power plants that ran at full power, maintenance free, forever, then yes, nuclear power would be the most practical and abundant source of energy in the modern world. Indeed, even if you had similar magic wands that could make all the other types of power plants currently known to man, this would likely still be so.

However, ever so sadly, there is no such magic wand.

The reality of it is, that nuclear power plants are, in terms of resource spent vs. resources produced, and in terms of pollution created vs. pollution reduced, the very worst of all the modern central power plants that can be created.

Most of the issues become evident simply by the awe of the shear amount of resources required to create them. The materials required to build a nuclear power plant cost hundreds of billions in today's dollars, and the gathering of all the required resources, even before you get to fissile materials, is the single most costly effort, both in terms of labor and shear environmental destruction, that mankind has ever wrought for the creation of a single installation. For the price of one nuclear power plant, you can build hundreds of conventional ones. For the environmental impact caused by the creation of a single such plant, you could build thousands of the traditional plants. Nuclear power plants, like nuclear bombs, are a matter of national pride, a costly symbol of national power, first and foremost, and never a matter of practicality, and though not quite so dangerous, are infinitely more expensive to create.

Then there's maintenance. Nuclear power plants are the Lamborghini's of the energy generating world. To simply "pop the hood" will cost you easily a billion dollars. Generally, if a conventional plant costs more than a few million to repair, it is abandoned and another built - they are that cheap in comparison, but if a nuclear plant costs even another hundred-billion to get up and running again, most governments will swallow the bill just to keep their little national icons. Such costs would never be tolerated for any other power plant that served no other purpose.

...and while it takes, on average, twenty years to get a nuclear plant on-line, that's also about the average life of the completed reactor. Twenty years of the most expensive and destructive labor known to man for twenty years of power is not what one would call an efficient exchange, especially in the western world, where nuclear power plants are only allowed to run at 5% of designed capacity during that time.

There *maybe* some place in the world where nuclear power is your only option, but if there are any such places, I'm sure I can count them on my fingers. Nuclear plants require a large reservoir of water, ocean, or river, not connected to the drinking supply, and must be built on a huge expanse of exposed, non-corrugated bedrock with a slope of no more than 2 degrees of median, far from any faults or mineral veins. This restricts their placement more than any conventional plant, rendering them nearly as difficult to place as Geothermal plants (the more advanced of which are actually a great deal more reliable and efficient, where you can use them, and take up much less space, without threatening nearby residents.)

And there's nothing special about nuclear power. Like most generators, they do one simple thing: Turn a wheel (in this case, with Steam). That's all you need to do to generate power: turn a wheel. It can be a small wheel, very quickly, or a large wheel, slow and steady, but as long as you can transfer that energy into a magnet and a turbine, you have power. We've come up with all sorts of ways to do this: Hydroelectric power damns, tidal power, wheels turned by the mere temperature difference between the air and the water they are in, geothermal energy, windmills, air tunnels, riverside water wheels, current catchers, cave constructions, coal, oil, methane, compost, etc. etc. - even simple pendulums (Loyd's has an entire skyscraper perpetually powered by a pendulum that just needs a push once a month - 100% pollution free.)... Really, of all the ways you could come up with to turn a freaking wheel, can you really think of one more exotic and dangerous than boiling water with radioactive materials heated to near critical levels?

I could go on, but I've hit the TL;DR wall, I'm afraid. In any case, as I've had it explained to me by more than one energy mogul, the reason we sink so much money and research into things like this, is because they are impractical dead ends. Tis the same with hydrogen powered cars, corn-based bio-fuels, and so on and so forth - flashy ideas that steal attention away from much more practical and efficient solutions that have already been tried and tested, real solutions that often threaten the status-quo, the current power structure, and in the end, the world economy. It's less about having efficient and pollution free energy resources, but more about having profitable resources, and ensuring that profit continues to flow to the same people as it does now, as to do otherwise, risks turning the world on its ear, and lots of folks in high places simply do not want to deal with that level of unpredictability. (And I wouldnt be so sure, in the end, that we'd want to either, especially here in the US, where the last thing backing our currency is the fact that oil is still traded in Dollars.)