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[Helgoland]

Coal will be around quite a bit longer than oil - and there's such a thing as biomass and natural gas. Even in a 100% renewable society, you'll still have big stationary producers of CO2.

[Putnam]

But what's the point of an electricity based drop-in solution, when that electricity is generated using fossil fuels. Because really, renewables aren't there yet.

What's the point of not killing my family when families are being killed all the time? Because, really, world peace isn't here yet.

 It's not like using electric cars is going to make an equivalent amount of fossil fuel burnage for electricity.

[Descan]

I'm all for fossil fuels, by the way, as long as they're carbon-neutral and non-polluting. I'd also like it if their extraction wasn't polluting either.

So if we can sequester carbon as it's burned, great! Or if we can extract the equivalent (perhaps more, to reverse our carbon damage) carbon from the atmosphere for every litre of fuel burned, great.

It's easier to sequester carbon like that at large oil, gas, and coal plants than in a truck or car, so to me the only solutions are to either create fuel for cars out of already-atmospheric carbon, or electric engines. And electric engines aren't powerful enough, nor long lasting enough yet. There've been some advances, but those still need to be rolled out to the public, which takes a long time (there are billions of cars, or last hundreds of millions, across the globe)

So being able to create carbon-neutral drop-in fuel, even if it's not energy efficient, is a good solution, because it's time and money efficient, which we are fairly short on (time, rather. Money is only short because capitalism and people are cheap) Time because it takes time to manufacture and roll-out all those electric cars, and money because people need to buy them and replace their fuel-powered cars. Not everyone can afford a new car in the next ten years. Energy efficiency, while great, is only really a huge issue now-adays because a) we need so much of energy, and b) the pollution is generated whether we can use 100% of the energy or 10%, so we want more bang for our buck. If we aren't paying in terms of pollution, then it doesn't matter as much (though since we need so much of it, we should still keep an eye on efficiency, but it's not world-ending if we are inefficient, especially if our inefficiency is to prevent pollution and carbon-dumping.)

I'd also like a nuclear solution, because nuclear is the safest god-damn thing we have and it's barely polluting (especially if you use thorium or those reactors that burn the fuel down to barely-anything. Breeder, I think they're called? Fast reactors? Something like that) The environment around reactors even less radioactive than around coal plants! (Not that either of them are particularly radioactive outside of a melt-down, but those barely happen and even when they do, they're fairly overblown or due to insanely huge fuck-ups on the engineers part. Or both.)

[10ebbor10]

But what's the point of an electricity based drop-in solution, when that electricity is generated using fossil fuels. Because really, renewables aren't there yet.

What's the point of not killing my family when families are being killed all the time? Because, really, world peace isn't here yet.

 It's not like using electric cars is going to make an equivalent amount of fossil fuel burnage for electricity.

It's the difference between shooting 5 families and 1 family. After all, the electric system is significantly more efficient, as I noted earlier.

[10ebbor10]

Well, actually, they can. There's such a thing as carbon capture and sequestration, which, if successfully deployed and 100% effective (doubtfull) would make everything carbon neutral.

[Descan]

Did you read anything beyond that one part, because I addressed that exact point there, greatorder. :I

[i2amroy]

Small note on nuclear power, but at the current rates of Uranium mining the estimates say that we will actually only have enough uranium for current designs to be powered for another 40-50 years (less if we build more plants). Thus any sort of long-reaching nuclear solution will need to be powered through either plutonium (not-necessarily weapons usable) or potentially thorium.

As for nuclear safety, I think it's mainly a question of concentration. Normal power plants slowly poison vast areas of land at time, but because the poisoning is done slowly it gives more time and makes cleanup somewhat more viable in the event of disasters. Nuclear, on the other hand, normally causes virtually no poisoning, but in the event of an accident causes an extremely high amount in a very small area. This means that while it may be normally better, in the event of an accident it is much more difficult to deal with safely.

I'd also like a nuclear solution, because nuclear is the safest god-damn thing we have and it's barely polluting (especially if you use thorium or those reactors that burn the fuel down to barely-anything. Breeder, I think they're called? Fast reactors? Something like that)

I believe you are thinking of Fast Breeder reactors.

[Descan]

See, I was right! Technically!

The best kind of right!

[Sheb]

Well, we only have fuel for 50 years if we never go looking for more expensive uranium source and don't recycle our fuel. MOX is a thing you know.

[10ebbor10]

Small note on nuclear power, but at the current rates of Uranium mining the estimates say that we will actually only have enough uranium for current designs to be powered for another 40-50 years (less if we build more plants). Thus any sort of long-reaching nuclear solution will need to be powered through either plutonium (not-necessarily weapons usable) or potentially thorium.

As for nuclear safety, I think it's mainly a question of concentration. Normal power plants slowly poison vast areas of land at time, but because the poisoning is done slowly it gives more time and makes cleanup somewhat more viable in the event of disasters. Nuclear, on the other hand, normally causes virtually no poisoning, but in the event of an accident causes an extremely high amount in a very small area. This means that while it may be normally better, in the event of an accident it is much more difficult to deal with safely.

Actually, 2 things. Those estimates include a dramatic expansion of nuclear power growth, as predicted before the entire Fukushima incident. More specifically, they include an increase of Uranium consumption from about 60 000 tonnes now, to almost 120 000 tonnes by 2030.

Secondly, they base themselves on current known economically recoverable resources, IIRC, with a price of up to 130$/kgU. Now, if you double that price, the known reserves raise from 5,300,000 to 7,096,000 tonnes. The ore cost contributes about half to a quarter of the cost of fuel, which in itself cost only 0.75c/ Kwh, and is dropping significantly as plants increase enrichment, and thus burn-up and efficiency.

So, the fuel cost can pentuple, and nuclear will barely notice. In fact, the higher maintenance cost of a fast breeder (not all that high,FYI) means that these become viable only after the Uranium ore price goes over 500$ /kg, at 1000-1500$/kg, even seawater becomes an economically recoverable reserve of uranium..

[Evil Knievel]

Small note on nuclear power, but at the current rates of Uranium mining the estimates say that we will actually only have enough uranium for current designs to be powered for another 40-50 years (less if we build more plants). Thus any sort of long-reaching nuclear solution will need to be powered through either plutonium (not-necessarily weapons usable) or potentially thorium.

As for nuclear safety, I think it's mainly a question of concentration. Normal power plants slowly poison vast areas of land at time, but because the poisoning is done slowly it gives more time and makes cleanup somewhat more viable in the event of disasters. Nuclear, on the other hand, normally causes virtually no poisoning, but in the event of an accident causes an extremely high amount in a very small area. This means that while it may be normally better, in the event of an accident it is much more difficult to deal with safely.

Actually, 2 things. Those estimates include a dramatic expansion of nuclear power growth, as predicted before the entire Fukushima incident. More specifically, they include an increase of Uranium consumption from about 60 000 tonnes now, to almost 120 000 tonnes by 2030.

Secondly, they base themselves on current known economically recoverable resources, IIRC, with a price of up to 130$/kgU. Now, if you double that price, the known reserves raise from 5,300,000 to 7,096,000 tonnes. The ore cost contributes about half to a quarter of the cost of fuel, which in itself cost only 0.75c/ Kwh, and is dropping significantly as plants increase enrichment, and thus burn-up and efficiency.

So, the fuel cost can pentuple, and nuclear will barely notice. In fact, the higher maintenance cost of a fast breeder (not all that high,FYI) means that these become viable only after the Uranium ore price goes over 500$ /kg, at 1000-1500$/kg, even seawater becomes an economically recoverable reserve of uranium..

This.

And also remember that in contrast to hydrocarbons, where a decline in findings despite harshly increased exploration efforts allows us estimate the finity (word exists?) of the resource, the ultimate amount of (affordably) mineable uranium is not determined.

[redwallzyl]

So a 20 billion dollar exprtememtal fusion reactor is beginning construction in France
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

[10ebbor10]

Groundbreaking started in 2007. But yeah, the first components for the actual reactor will be delivered by the end of 2014.

[Descan]

20 billion, so much, w0w.

That's like... a new fighter jet! Well, part of one, at least!

[miauw62]

(insert that one SMBC comic with the senator and the scientist and the 'accidental' science colony here, you know the one)