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[MetalSlimeHunt]

China's actually doing a very good job pulling back emissions. The US was doing passably in spite of my eco extremism until Trump hit office. Hopefully his idiotic attachment to coal will cause a backlash when it inevitably fails (coal's economics are permanently in the hole, it's like horses vs. cars).

Or horses vs machines in general (though that took some time), though they did find niches, nothing majorly economic though, unless you count horseraces.

Doubt coal would be able to find a niche because it pretty much only does one thing well.

As I understand it, Coal is still about the cheapest way to heat things up in the middle-term.  Nuclear has never come close to beating it (only beating it in up-time and acid-rain production).  Natural Gas might be cheaper than coal right now, but that is largely a US thing tied to the inability to ship natural gas over-seas.  When a LNG port comes online the price for natural gas in the US will probably go up to more in line with oil while the world price will come down.  Oil has never been as cheap as coal; we mainly use it in internal combustion engines.  Wind and solar are less energy dense (Solar is about 1kW/m^2 times the efficiency of your solar cell and the percentage of day-light.  So a 10MW solar plant has a minimum size of 100mx100m of solar panels.  Looking it up on the internet, one in Australia takes up 80 hectares.  A 10MW wind turbine has a rotor diameter of 140m.  A 10MW nuclear plant is 22×16×11 m, and most of that is shielding.).

Coal's cost is deceptive. Once you take into account the energy to dig it out of the ground, the energy to transport it to plants (over 100,000 tons daily), and that a lot of our coal is now low-grade, it comes out super expensive. It was no ecological political measure that caused the severe cutbacks in coal plants, they plain don't turn a profit. This is all without considering the health and environmental costs, which probably put it as an outright loss but are hard to put to numbers.

Nuclear's main cost, as indicated already, is primarily time instead of energy, dollars, or health. Not many takers of that 40-year return on investment.

I suspect Trump is going to have an awkward conversation if the companies running coal plants decide to tell him the truth about their intentions.

[smjjames]

Nuclear's main cost, as indicated already, is primarily time instead of energy, dollars, or health. Not many takers of that 40-year return on investment.

And not with Fusion power making slow progress.

Yes, yes, I know Fusion power has been '10 years away' for like 40 years now. The progress is tantalizing.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You're preaching to the choir. Just a few more years until Iter begins ignition attempts.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Nuclear's main cost, as indicated already, is primarily time instead of energy, dollars, or health. Not many takers of that 40-year return on investment.

And not with Fusion power making slow progress.

Yes, yes, I know Fusion power has been '10 years away' for like 40 years now. The progress is tantalizing.

It's honestly getting really close now.  Maybe enough that '10 years away' may actually mean '10 years away,' maybe even less.

[ChairmanPoo]

Sergarr, if you don't work  in a troll factory maybe you should send them your resume. Bad Vlad pays good money for this stuff..

[MetalSlimeHunt]

No, Serg is overqualified. Your average paid troll just goes around shouting about rightful clay and decadence.

[smjjames]

You're preaching to the choir. Just a few more years until Iter begins ignition attempts.

Nuclear's main cost, as indicated already, is primarily time instead of energy, dollars, or health. Not many takers of that 40-year return on investment.

And not with Fusion power making slow progress.

Yes, yes, I know Fusion power has been '10 years away' for like 40 years now. The progress is tantalizing.

It's honestly getting really close now.  Maybe enough that '10 years away' may actually mean '10 years away,' maybe even less.

I was just saying that it may still be some time, and yeah, it does feel like they're getting really close. I read a Time or Newsweek article some months back on a private group (I think it was private, may have been university sponsored) trying a setup type that they were making progress with.

The more people working on it, the higher the chances that someone will make a breakthrough. And Fusion would be absolutely revolutionary.

[PTTG??]

Coal is more expensive than natural gas now. That's the whole reason it's dying.

It's an outdated fuel source that's being kept on life support in order to preserve 20,000 jobs. Ban coal and give everyone in the coal industry a lifetime stipend and we'd still come out economically ahead.

I wonder if ITER is less useful than it appears, though. It seems unwise to put so much funding into one megascale fusor instead of some of the smaller, more portable designs like the lockheed design or the polywell.

[smjjames]

Coal is more expensive than natural gas now. That's the whole reason it's dying.

It's an outdated fuel source that's being kept on life support in order to preserve 20,000 jobs. Ban coal and give everyone in the coal industry a lifetime stipend and we'd still come out economically ahead.

And killing the economy of at least one state*. Then again, the economy is probably already in poor shape due to relying on coal.

*West Virginia is the only state that I know is highly reliant on the coal industry, not sure about the rest of the coal belt.

[alway]

Renewables generate more jobs; and not just by a small margin. Solar alone is nearly as many jobs in the US as coal, and is a comparatively small portion of the generation capacity.

[wierd]

You're preaching to the choir. Just a few more years until Iter begins ignition attempts.

Nuclear's main cost, as indicated already, is primarily time instead of energy, dollars, or health. Not many takers of that 40-year return on investment.

And not with Fusion power making slow progress.

Yes, yes, I know Fusion power has been '10 years away' for like 40 years now. The progress is tantalizing.

It's honestly getting really close now.  Maybe enough that '10 years away' may actually mean '10 years away,' maybe even less.

I was just saying that it may still be some time, and yeah, it does feel like they're getting really close. I read a Time or Newsweek article some months back on a private group (I think it was private, may have been university sponsored) trying a setup type that they were making progress with.

The more people working on it, the higher the chances that someone will make a breakthrough. And Fusion would be absolutely revolutionary.

That would be the stellerator with the funny sounding German name.

https://www.theengineer.co.uk/wendelstein-stellarator-begins-upgrades-after-fusion-success/

Short version: Stellerators work (and appear to work better than traditional tokamacs), they have achieved sustained pulses of 6sec, which they have to terminate to avoid damaging the reactor. After the upgrades, they can run it for pulses of 10 seconds at max. After more research, they plan to replace the upgrades with better upgrades, that will let them run it for 30 minutes.

Itinerary is over the next 4 years.

[smjjames]

You're preaching to the choir. Just a few more years until Iter begins ignition attempts.

Nuclear's main cost, as indicated already, is primarily time instead of energy, dollars, or health. Not many takers of that 40-year return on investment.

And not with Fusion power making slow progress.

Yes, yes, I know Fusion power has been '10 years away' for like 40 years now. The progress is tantalizing.

It's honestly getting really close now.  Maybe enough that '10 years away' may actually mean '10 years away,' maybe even less.

I was just saying that it may still be some time, and yeah, it does feel like they're getting really close. I read a Time or Newsweek article some months back on a private group (I think it was private, may have been university sponsored) trying a setup type that they were making progress with.

The more people working on it, the higher the chances that someone will make a breakthrough. And Fusion would be absolutely revolutionary.

That would be the stellerator with the funny sounding German name.

https://www.theengineer.co.uk/wendelstein-stellarator-begins-upgrades-after-fusion-success/

Short version: Stellerators work (and appear to work better than traditional tokamacs), they have achieved sustained pulses of 6sec, which they have to terminate to avoid damaging the reactor. After the upgrades, they can run it for pulses of 10 seconds at max. After more research, they plan to replace the upgrades with better upgrades, that will let them run it for 30 minutes.

Itinerary is over the next 4 years.

That's not the one I was thinking of, the one I was thinking of was built in the US, not in Germany. I'll try to find it.

Edit: Found it I believe. The Time magazine issue (where I saw it in RL) is paywalled, so, here's a similar article from another place: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601482/go-inside-trialpha-a-startup-pursuing-the-ideal-power-source/

[Reelya]

Zero Hedge the right-wing economics journal has an article about Trump fighting against the "War on Coal". But even they are saying it's baloney. By that token 1900's car makers should be reprimanded for their War On Buggies.

It's kind of self-explanatory that the measures to prop up coal are all supply-side economics. The problem with pouring money into propping up suppliers is that this doesn't directly boost demand, it just depresses prices, so your subsidies might actually have to keep getting bigger each year if you're not careful with supply-side economics.

[smjjames]

The article I linked is a lot shorter than the one I remember reading, but I'm definetly sure that's the company I'm remembering.

Basically, there's lots of people working on it, with all kinds of designs.

Zero Hedge the right-wing economics journal has an article about Trump fighting against the "War on Coal". But even they are saying it's baloney. By that token 1900's car makers should be reprimanded for their War On Buggies.

It's kind of self-explanatory that the measures to prop up coal are all supply-side economics. The problem with pouring money into propping up suppliers is that this doesn't directly boost demand, it just depresses prices, so your subsidies might actually have to keep getting bigger each year if you're not careful with supply-side economics.

Plus it sounded like all they can get at is the low quality coal, all of the high and good quality coal was dug up long ago, or is too deep to be accessed economically.

Also, Fusion power would absolutely kill coal, not right away, but it'd definetly be the final nail in the coffin, so to speak.

Although coal wouldn't neccesarily go away completely since coal is still used in things like smelting (as coke), and in some industrial and chemical proccesses.

[Frumple]

I wonder if ITER is less useful than it appears, though. It seems unwise to put so much funding into one megascale fusor instead of some of the smaller, more portable designs like the lockheed design or the polywell.

Hey, if you can first get something to work, downsizing and economizing the design suddenly tends to become a lot easier. Considering that 40 years of 10 years from now, if it takes a small city's worth of reactor I'd still be pretty okay with it, personally. Then we can use the power to run testing for smaller designs :V

And eh, coal's really already dead, it's just taking a while to stop twitching. Has been for a bit now.