Electric cars: What do you think?

[anorlunda]

Well, certainly not for 2020. Only 2012 and 2013 have "(actual)" in the description, that made me think the others might be projections from back then. And indeed: Various websites first had the graph in 2014.

Here's another source, published in 2016 that uses only history, not projections.

https://www.scottmadden.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Revisiting-the-Duck-Curve_Article.pdf

In this report, ScottMadden analyzes average hourly production data from CAISO from January 2011 through June 2016 to understand if actual results align with the original forecast and what implications may tell us about what to do next. Our analysis confirms the duck curve is real and growing faster than expected.

Regarding EVs, it shows that in some locations, the lowest price power may be mid afternoon, rather than at night. That means that EV charging stations should be located at work. In work parking lots with thousands of cars, that's a big deal.

I had a discussion with the owner of the RV park where I live. He was upgrading service from 3.6 kW per site to 6kW. On the weekends, there is an average of 3 cars/trucks per site. I told him that if even half of of those cars/trucks become EVs in coming years, that the peak power needs of the park would increase to 16.5kW per site. If all become EVs, the peak demand becomes 27kW per site, and perhaps 40kW worst case when even more vehicles come on holidays. And that is not considering the possibility of those huge motor homes becoming EVs.

 

[neanderthalphysics]

Maybe so, but probably not.

1. Long term diesel storage is less problematic than gasoline (especially gasoline-alcohol blends) because it consists of less volatile hydrocarbons. Even so, and even when treated with biocides and stored in full containers (to limit oxidation, and condensation), storage life is on the order of 5 years.
https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp-country/en_au/media/fuel-news/long-term-storage-diesel.pdf

2. Gasoline is more volatile, and the lower molecular weight fractions will evaporate away. Gasoline is often blended with ethanol, and because alcohols are hygroscopic, moisture contamination becomes an even bigger issue. As with diesel, biocides are also indicated for long term gasoline storage.

3. Neither gasoline nor diesel fuel have been stored for hundreds of years, and stability over this time span is unknown. Underground storage tank leakage due to corrosion (mostly caused by water contamination) has been a big problem, so attention has to be paid to what the fuel will be stored in.

Doubt if it is practical, but very long term storage may be possible with a combination of lower temperature (see: Arrhenius equation) and tank venting through a regenerating desiccant bed (which ought to be good enough for a dewpoint of -40°C), or using a sealed tank with an inert atmosphere like argon in the headspace.

OK thanks, I was thinking about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve but it seems the SPR stores crude, and not refined fuels.

Nevertheless venting of the more volatile fractions, and biological activity on the crude is still relevant to crude oil. How can crude be stored (by man, or geologically) in the long term? All the problems you present of biological activity, volatility and leaks/corrosion are present for crude storage as well as for storage of refined fuels. Obviously it was decided that these problems may be engineered out.

In any case, if you stuck petrol or diesel in a sealed, sterile container, they will last for hundreds of years, that's my point. Their energy content will remain. The fact that you may get biological activity on the fuel, loss of volatile components, absorption of water, leaks, etc. are issues that can be mitigated by engineering. The point is that fundamentally the physics and chemistry are on our side for long term storage.

I don't think you can say the same of charged lithium (or other) batteries.

 

[anorlunda]

How can crude be stored (by man, or geologically) in the long term?

You said it yourself, geologically. Leave it in the ground until needed.

 

[Rive]

Regarding EVs, it shows that in some locations, the lowest price power may be mid afternoon, rather than at night. That means that EV charging stations should be located at work.

At first sight it is both a very logical and very disturbing.
On the other hand, decent amount of PV capacity is already located 'at work', so the extra wire is just from the roof to the parking lot.
Cloudy days are still a problem, though.

 

[essenmein]

From a power train perspective full EV wins hands down. Three main reasons:
1) Battery charge to mechanical motion conversion efficiency is much higher (~80% vs ~20%)
2) Regenerative braking, EV can recoup some of the kinetic energy when coming to a stop vs burning 100% off as heat in brakes. More impact for stop and go vehicles than long distance driving.
3) 100% torque at 0rpm (unless you have a silly asynch machine).

EV are mechanically far simpler, which has down stream impacts like much lower maintenance requirements.

As far as pollution goes, if we ever get past this renewable thing and go 100% nuclear (no problem on cloudy days ), then IMO battery electric land vehicles start make sense for many applications, but if you have to have the grid scale BE storage (I have no nice words for this idea unless its some sort of flow battery, even then its an extremely tall order) competing for the Li as well then IMO there will be serious supply/cost issues as it rolls out globally.

Biggest thing we need to do though is basically standardize on one or two battery chemistries and base form factor for EV cells for volume production other wise recycling them at EOL will be a huge pain, we would need to be able to effectively recycle the lithium other wise in a few decades or whatever we'll be sitting there dumbfounded when we run out of the easy to get at stuff.

Maybe a curve ball could be nuclear->catalytic creation carbon based fuel from CO2 and H2O->combustion.

Even with the inefficiency, carbon based fuels still offer much higher energy density, 34MJ/l*0.2 is still a lot more than 2.4MJ/l *0.8... So if we could close the carbon cycle there with nukes then I'll happily continue listening to the howl of a straight 6 pushed to the red line even if it means I have to shift gears with a lever (how quaint).

 

[John Archer]

How long will an EV battery pack last? (my current ride is 15 years old, and going strong)
What needs to be done to dispose of EV batteries? How much can be recycled? (Iron and aluminum can be easiliy recycled)
While in many cities, the can make a bit more sense, in rural areas, they are very limited. Let me know when the Ice Road Truckers start running EV trucks.
How does weather affect performance? When it is -20 on a Wisconsin winter morning, will that EV have a similar range as on a 75 degree summer day?
How is the range affected when you need to crank the heat, on a cold day, or the AC on a hot one? (My current vehicle doesn't need to do anything extra to give me heat in the winter, and the AC has only a very minor effect on mileage)
I suppose one way to look at it is what happens if you accidentally run out of charge (or gas in a combustion engine car). Barring a tow, the regular car gets a couple of gallons of gas delivered and you are on your way in a couple of minutes. The EV, has a truck come out, with a diesel generator in tow,(ironic?) to charge the EV. Hopefully it doesn't take too long, and a charging station is nearby to finish the job.

Electric Vehicles are the future, the ones we have now are glimpses into what they can be. In a few decades they will be much better, they just aren't there yet.
Increase the amount of nuclear energy, and they start to make more sense.

 

[mfb]

Electric cars could charge other electric cars, just a matter of the right adapter. You would need to charge about as long as you drive to the nearest charger afterwards (assuming you get the electricity from a similar car), but that is not too bad.

Battery degradation doesn't seem to be a big issue for Tesla's batteries so far even after 250,000 km and 5 years, although we don't have data for 10+ years for obvious reasons: Graphs. And batteries are only getting better over time.

What needs to be done to dispose of EV batteries? How much can be recycled?

I generally prefer solid waste over a technology that blasts its toxic stuff directly into the air, as burning oil products does.

 

[DEvens]

The specific shape of the daily demand curve depends on many things.

In areas where there is a very warm summer, the demand tends to max out in mid-to-late afternoon, starting about 2PM to 3PM when kids start to get home, and parents get home to receive the kids. People get home, turn on the A/C, the TV, the stove, the computers, etc. and etc. It starts to fall again round about 9PM or so. In areas where there is less demand for A/C, the daily spike may be less pronounced. In areas where electric home-heating is a thing, there can be a big rise in demand from that when people get home and raise the thermostat, then it lowers when they go to bed, and turn down the thermostat.

It also depends on how much industry there is in the area. Industry tends to ramp up early in the morning, 6AM to 9AM, ramp down again late in the afternoon. Unless it's an industry that has multiple work shifts, in which case they can be flexible. Maybe it's worth paying the shift premiums to have the employees working at night in order to save electricity costs. Or some industries, such as aluminum smelting, have pulses of use that last for days then go low again.

 

[cosmik debris]

I suppose one way to look at it is what happens if you accidentally run out of charge (or gas in a combustion engine car). Barring a tow, the regular car gets a couple of gallons of gas delivered and you are on your way in a couple of minutes. The EV, has a truck come out, with a diesel generator in tow,(ironic?) to charge the EV. Hopefully it doesn't take too long, and a charging station is nearby to finish the job.

You could tow the EV part way to a charging station using regeneration to charge the EV part way.

Cheers

 

[member 656954]

It is good to question new tech, @neanderthalphysics, but honestly, on your superficial assessment, we'd not have moved to gas powered cars over horses (though, perhaps that would have been a good thing for us and the planet).

1) Energy to charge the batteries must come from somewhere.
If the source of the energy is nuclear, fair enough, the energy source has no carbon footprint. But if the source of energy is from an gas/oil power plant, you are exchanging one fossil fuel engine for another one. The power plant is probably more efficient especially if it is a combined heat & power plant, but still.

Battery electric vehicle (BEV) is an overall more efficient use of energy for personal transport than internal combustion (ICE) and even where BEV is fossil fuel powered, that means less overall fossil fuels are burned. But where BEV can be charged by renewable energy (RE) - and particularly locally by domestic solar power (PV) - then it is considerably more energy efficient and CO2 effective.

2) Batteries age
Gas or diesel can sit happy in storage tanks for hundreds of years. Batteries age; any charge held in them is lost over time and furthermore, over time they lose their maximum charge level.

I was not aware that anyone has demonstrated fossil fuels sitting in a storage tanks for hundreds of years (and fuel does eventually evaporate in any event), but irrespective, your point is a false equivalence. Yes, batteries lose their charge, but you're inventing edge cases if, for BEV, that makes a difference to the user. Do you expect any car to be left sitting for 'hundreds of years'? Of course not, and most drivers will never leave their car - BEV or ICE - undriven for an extended period sufficient that this is an issue. And if they do, then they should prepare their vehicle for the duration, as I had to do with my ICE car once when it went into storage for two years while I was working overseas.

The maximum charge level does need to be managed though, and dedicated battery management handles this in BEVs. Tesla has examples of 500,000 mile battery packs and recently announced intention of a 1 million mile battery pack, which from other evidence of battery robustness, seems a credible claim. We are finding that with careful power management, BEV batteries last a lot longer than most would have expected from their experience with phones and other Li-ion consumer electronic devices.

3) Safety of batteries
Batteries are basically sealed units with both the oxidizing + reducing agents mixed together in intimate contact. Which means the potential for a runaway reaction is there, waiting for a trigger. Gas or diesel tanks just contain fuel. Almost empty gas tanks contain fuel + oxidizer.

In any event, in an accident, the oxidizer for a gas/diesel powered car must come from the environment. For an electric vehicle, it is all there, pre- and well mixed. It will be very difficult to make the battery compartment of an electric vehicle immune to all sorts of damage which you might get in a conceivable lifetime - crushing damage, piercing, fires, etc.

Yes, this is an issue, however, real world statistics from BEVs on the road refutes your assertion of safety for typical road conditions, including accidents. You need to create extreme edge cases to support such a position, and for interest, look at the number of ICE vehicle fires per annum and compare that to BEV. Your ICE is a more dangerous place to be in a crash than a BEV on the basis of fires.

4) Lifetime carbon footprint of producing batteries
Has anyone looked at whether the lifetime carbon footprint of mining lithium and producing the batteries is worth it?

Yes they have and cursory research will highlight this. IVL recently updated their own 2017 research and it's a good news story. As more batteries are being manufactured, the per-plant capacity increases and per-battery pack CO2 goes down. Plus, more RE is being pointed at battery pack manufacturing, further reducing the CO2 load.

Also, while it's convenient to target lithium 'mining' (a subject many people have no idea mostly entails evaporation, not conventional mining) the same argument applies to fossil fuel mining. Fracking appears to cause microquakes, for instance, so avoiding them is surely a good thing.

At the macro scale, here's my general rebuttal to ICE pundits, applicable even if they don't believe in climate change:

1. Fossil fuels are not renewable, they will run out eventually, and we need them for more important manufacturing processes than moving individuals about for personal transport so BEV is a hedge to that future.

2. BEV does not inject particulate matter into the urban environment in the way ICE does, and cleaner air reduces health-costs that we are all paying for, directly and indirectly.

3. BEV is significantly quieter than ICE and significantly reduces noise stress across the board, another health cost benefit.

Irrespective of all the BEV vs ICE debate, we really need less people moving en mass in general, more public transport and ideally electrified, and lighter, smaller personal transport so a 'car' consumes considerable less energy per trip than they do now.

 

[russ_watters]

Another..uh..discussion we're having reminded me I never responded to this:

If we try to comprehensively address one topic before starting with the next then we won't get much done in the 21st century.

It wasn't my intent to imply that the grid conversion must be finished before we start electric car development. Grid conversion should lead - significantly - but at least the R&D and maturation of the products can certainly happen in parallel, and in particular if a guy like Elon Musk wants to use his own funds to do it, he can have at it. My concern is that the grid is being treated by many as an afterthought, or worse being approached in a fundamentally non-workable way, in my opinion.

This position does not apply to a nuclear power phase-out, which is at best a complete waste if even started before coal is eliminated.

Ramping up production of electric cars, building the infrastructure for them and so on takes time.

Yes, but I don't think it takes as much time as converting the power grid, which is one of the reasons I advocate a head start. It only takes about 2 years to develop and start producing a new car, people only keep new cars is about 6 years and the average car age in the US is 11 years. So if an electric car technology achieves a critical milestone or incentives/penalties mandate their proliferation we could have half the cars on the road be electric in about 15 years.

Also, I'm less concerned about infrastructure than you are, since the vast majority of recharging happens at home or at work.

If they lead to lower greenhouse gas emissions today (and they tend to do) then increasing their fraction is good now.

That's fair; my point is just that it isn't optimal. It isn't the quickest or cheapest or surest path to a given amount of carbon reduction. Since money is finite, using what we have to replace coal with nuclear should have the biggest bang for the buck.

 

[member 656954]

using what we have to replace coal with nuclear should have the biggest bang for the buck

Given the cost of nuclear and the deployment lag, that's a worse use of funds and works against your previous 'optimal' point.

The markets are saying that the biggest bang for buck is utility-scale solar and wind. Storage is the Achilles heel, and while Li-ion batteries are the current industry darling, higher energy density and / or lower cost per kWh is coming (Australian researchers have recently shown you can accommodate sulfer expansion in a lithium-sulfer cofiguration and that's more energy dense and likely cheaper) which will accelerate renewable energy by addressing the storage problem. Unfortunately, Li-ion is overshadowing flow batteries like Nant Energies Zinc-air that are well suited to grid applications, but as the need increases to plug the "sun ain't shining" gap, more solutions will be considered.

Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) is also mooted as a likely 'bang for buck' point because all those car batteries represent a huge energy sink (though I'm skeptical, unless battery electric vehicles (BEV) can be recharged in similar time to fossil fuel, I'm not sure drivers will want their 'tank' siphoned by their utility whenver).

Coal is being replaced right now, and not by nuclear...it's gas and renewables that are sending all those coal companies bankrupt.

 

[hmmm27]

When nuclear would otherwise be idle, use the power to suck Carbon out of the air.

 

[russ_watters]

Given the cost of nuclear and the deployment lag, that's a worse use of funds and works against your previous 'optimal' point.

The cost and deployment lag are misleading when looked at without considering the plant output because of how enormous the output of nuclear is compared with most solar or wind installations. What matters is the cost and time per unit of energy it will produce.

And both the time and cost of nuclear could be reduced substantially if people would just get out of its way.

The markets are saying that the biggest bang for buck is utility-scale solar and wind.

No they aren't; most new generation in the US is natural gas...or are you just referring to carbon free energy?

The markets aren't being motivated to consider the CO2 impact, nor are they currently structured to absorb the hidden cost of solar and wind's intermittency, which makes the produced power cost more than the amortized cost of the plant.

We can't let the markets keep running the way they are if we want a substantially carbon free grid. The only way to get there is to motivate construction of nuclear plants.

...which will accelerate renewable energy by addressing the storage problem.

No it won't: ignoring the intermittency problem is free; addressing it costs money. When forced to start addressing it, that will make solar/wind cost more, not less. Right now, those costs are borne by a hidden penalty on natural gas. It's a lot of the reason why the supposedly economical renewables have made electricity in Germany and California so expensive.

Coal is being replaced right now, and not by nuclear...it's gas and renewables that are sending all those coal companies bankrupt.

Yes; roughly 2/3 gas and 1/3 renewables. So do we want carbon free electricity or not?

 

[hmmm27]

roughly 2/3 gas and 1/3 renewables

Are the gas plants retrofittable to hydrogen and ammonia ?

 

[russ_watters]

Are the gas plants retrofittable to hydrogen and ammonia ?

I wouldn't think so. They are completely different purposes.

 

[Bystander]

No it won't: ignoring the intermittency problem is free; addressing it costs money. When forced to start addressing it, that will make solar/wind cost more, not less. Right now, those costs are borne by a hidden penalty on natural gas. It's a lot of the reason why the supposedly economical renewables have made electricity in Germany and California so expensive.

+10

 

[anorlunda]

Real life is always more complex than we imagine.

In the USA, renewables are already having a significant influence on market prices in some locations during some hours. But the primary effect is not changes in price, but rather destabilization of the markets raising the threat of blackouts or loss of reliability. An extreme case is South Australia (before the wildfires).

• South Australia had to go to Elon Musk to bail them out on an emergency basis.
• Markets in the Province of Ontario, Canada are in chaos.
• In Germany some coal plants decided to go out of business. The government had to pay them to keep running because it would threaten grid reliability.
• In the USA, it led to a big fight between the federal government and state governments. Federal law requires a marketplace that provides fair treatment and a level playing field for all participants, just like the stock market is supposed to be fair to all people who want to buy/sell. States want to favor renewables, but federal law overrides and the states have no authority. Meanwhile, gas plant owners are suing renewable owners over the subsidies they get before coming to the market.

See this PF Insights article
https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/renewable-energy-meets-power-grid-operations/

Today, I would say that price does not even appear on the short list of concerns.

 

[member 656954]

The markets aren't being motivated to consider the CO2 impact

That's the key!

A price on pollution would immediately change behaviors. Everything else we discuss is addressing the symptom, not the cause

 

[member 656954]

And both the time and cost of nuclear could be reduced substantially if people would just get out of its way.

I guess we'll see how that goes with some Chinese reactors that are being deployed, but given that getting 'out of the way' of nuclear leads to sites such as Andreyeva Bay, I'm not sure that's a desirable attribute of atomic power policy.

Also, LCOE figures usually account for intermittency, and solar and wind are cheaper than current nuclear even on that basis, and as we don't have any commercial Gen IV SMRs, their cost is still unknown.

 

[mfb]

Also, LCOE figures usually account for intermittency, and solar and wind are cheaper than current nuclear even on that basis, and as we don't have any commercial Gen IV SMRs, their cost is still unknown.

They account for intermittency in the current grid, where gas can easily accommodate the fluctuating production. This will not work if we want to switch off gas power plants.

 

[russ_watters]

In the USA, renewables are already having a significant influence on market prices in some locations during some hours. But the primary effect is not changes in price, but rather destabilization of the markets raising the threat of blackouts or loss of reliability...

Today, I would say that price does not even appear on the short list of concerns.

Could you expand on this just a bit? In a previous thread you (I think it was you), listed the primary requirements of the power grid, and if I remember correctly #1 by a mile was reliability. In the West we assume electricity is always there and if it isn't that's a rare, bizarre tragedy. But I'm not clear on why adding solar/wind capacity would cause a loss of reliability. Doesn't more capacity of any kind increase reliability?

If that sounds like a trap, I'll spring it myself: my view is that an increase in capacity and a replacement of capacity are or should be identical things. So if a 1000 MW coal plant is shut down, it needs to be replaced by 1000 MW of something else that can provide continuous power. If that's 1000 MW of natural gas, we're all good, but if it is 1000 MW of solar, we have a big, new reliability problem. Is that how you see it?

 

[russ_watters]

That's the key!

Let me be more specific: current policies promote solar and wind power, but not carbon reduction.

Does that sound like a contradiction?

It is.

 

[russ_watters]

I guess we'll see how that goes with some Chinese reactors that are being deployed,

Yes, I am indeed very interested to see how things develop for the Chinese (and dismayed it isn't us).

but given that getting 'out of the way' of nuclear leads to sites such as Andreyeva Bay, I'm not sure that's a desirable attribute of atomic power policy.

[googles]
That's an incident that I'm pretty sure I never heard of before, that happened 37 years ago, in Russia, that didn't kill anyone as far as my 30 seconds of googling tells me. Are we really doing this? Should we abandon hydroelectric power because of the South Fork Dam collapse? (which I'm willing to bet you never heard of...)

Also, LCOE figures usually account for intermittency...

It most certainly/explicitly does not:

in 2010, Paul Joskow, the President of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), published a http://economics.mit.edu/files/6317 showing how use of the LCOE to compare renewables and conventional power generating technologies “tends implicitly to overvalue intermittent generating technologies compared to dispatchable alternatives.”
...
I show that the prevailing approach that relies on comparisons of the ‘levelized cost’ per MWh supplied by different generating technologies, or any other measure of total life-cycle production costs per MWh supplied, is seriously flawed. It is flawed because it effectively treats all MWhs supplied as a homogeneous product governed by the law of one price. Specifically, traditional levelized cost comparisons fail to take account of the fact that the value (wholesale market price) of electricity supplied varies widely over the course of a typical year.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/willia...wable-energys-ticking-time-bomb/#ab648eb16596

Researchers Have Been Underestimating the Cost of Wind and Solar

How should electricity from wind turbines and solar panels be evaluated? Should it be evaluated as if these devices are stand-alone devices? Or do these devices provide electricity that is of such low quality, because of its intermittency and other factors, that we should recognize the need for supporting services associated with actually putting the electricity on the grid?
...

This problem is currently not being recognized by any of the groups evaluating wind and solar, using techniques such as LCOE, EROI, LCA, and EPP. As a result, published results suggest that wind and solar are much more beneficial than they really are.

... If we add subsidized wind and solar, that act, by itself, changes the needed pricing for all of the other types of electricity. The price per kWh of supporting types of electricity needs to rise, because their EROIs fall as they are used in a less efficient manner. This same problem affects all of the other pricing approaches as well, including LCOE. Thus, our current pricing approaches make intermittent wind and solar look much more beneficial than they really are.
[emphasis added]

https://www.energycentral.com/c/ec/researchers-have-been-underestimating-cost-wind-and-solar

I mean, you brought it up: you know we're not yet addressing the storage issue. Does that mean it isn't a real issue or does that mean we're just pretending it isn't an issue and ignoring the cost? When the intermittent renewables fraction is small, it is easy to pretend it isn't a problem and pretend it isn't affecting the cost of electricity.

 

[russ_watters]

They account for intermittency in the current grid, where gas can easily accommodate the fluctuating production.

I feel like this is vague/isn't a complete thought and is therefore misleading. Who is the "they" that accounts for the intermittency, and how do they account for it? What does "easily accommodate the fluctuating production" really mean? What are the actual impacts of that "fluctuating production"?

Isn't it true that "fluctuating production" really means that when a solar plant goes online it reduces the production of a natural gas power plant and the cost per kWh goes up?

 

[anorlunda]

Could you expand on this just a bit?

I won't have time to make a better explanation until next week. But here's a short answer.
Uncertainty, and anomalous market behaviors (such as + or - price spikes or rumored changes in regulations) are signs of volatility. That sometimes spooks investors. Some withdraw from the markets while others postpone or cancel investments.

Reliability of the grid from an engineering point of view rests upon a foundation of a reliable set of investors willing to invest. Engineering/psychology/politics all mix to create the reality that we deal with.

 

[gmax137]

given that getting 'out of the way' of nuclear leads to sites such as Andreyeva Bay

I don't see that as "given" at all.

 

[mfb]

I feel like this is vague/isn't a complete thought and is therefore misleading. Who is the "they" that accounts for the intermittency, and how do they account for it? What does "easily accommodate the fluctuating production" really mean? What are the actual impacts of that "fluctuating production"?

Isn't it true that "fluctuating production" really means that when a solar plant goes online it reduces the production of a natural gas power plant and the cost per kWh goes up?

"they" is people who do these calculations - but as you said in the comment before, that's something that only works in grids with a small fraction of fluctuating renewables, in that case these renewables can always be sold at a market price that doesn't change much and there is nothing to adjust. As long as the number of gas power plants doesn't change it just reduces their profit, but if it leads to a larger reliance on them (or fewer gas power plants because they become less profitable) then it also leads to higher prices when the renewables are not available.

 

[member 656954]

And both the time and cost of nuclear could be reduced substantially if people would just get out of its way.

Thinking I should have just asked, who are the 'people' and what do you mean by 'out of the way', @russ_watters?

 

[epenguin]

It is good to question new tech, @neanderthalphysics, but honestly, on your superficial assessment, we'd not have moved to gas powered cars over horses (though, perhaps that would have been a good thing for us and the planet).

...

Thanks for defining most of your acronyms. I have rarely read a thread with so many, I could guess quite a lot but not all (and suspect some of them are known only in North America) making it quite hard to read. A glossary would be helpful.

 

[mfb]

Thinking I should have just asked, who are the 'people' and what do you mean by 'out of the way', @russ_watters?

I'm not Russ, but:
* Not asking for a general ban of nuclear power plants.
* Applying the same standards for everyone.

Why can coal power plants emit radioactive ash in quantities that would make nuclear power plants lose their license? Radioactivity is not even the worst part of that ash, and this doesn't even include CO2 emissions.

 

[gmax137]

I'm not Russ either, but I think this would go a long way

* Applying the same standards for everyone.

Where this really means, "apply the same standards to all of the electric generation methods."

Google around for "mortality rate by energy source" or similar search strings. Eye opening...

 

[mfb]

Google around for "mortality rate by energy source" or similar search strings. Eye opening...

How deadly is your kilowatt?

No surprise here. Coal is the most deadly. Nuclear power is last. Both in the internal comparison (including Chernobyl and Fukushima) and within the US.
Coal to nuclear power is a ratio of 1000 globally and 100,000 in the US.

 

[member 656954]

Applying the same standards for everyone.

Well, we rarely do this anywhere in life, but each method should have standards applied based on the attributes of the generation method, surely?

Is the idea that a PV plant or wind farm is as inherently risky as a Gen III/III+ nuclear reactor?

Irrespective, what standards make up the discussion of 'same'?

As for coal, I'm not defending it. Vile stuff, it kills the people digging it up directly, it kills the communities that surround the plants indirectly, and it's killing all of us via global warming slowly slowly.

Google around for "mortality rate by energy source" or similar search strings. Eye opening...

I've never argued that mortality rates from nuclear are not low (and I note that using a single global number masks the high rate in China compared to the very low rate in the USA). Nuclear fission is a terrific electrical generation power source...if only it did not create toxic, radioactive waste that will endure beyond how long our civilization is likely to last and for which we can't agree on storage methods to contain it.

 

[mfb]

Is the idea that a PV plant or wind farm is as inherently risky as a Gen III/III+ nuclear reactor?

They kill more people than nuclear reactors. At overall low levels, probably low enough to not be a deciding factor, but pointing out that nuclear reactors can kill people and ignoring that other energy sources routinely do so is a double standard. That kind of double standard kept coal power plants alive, because without it we could have switched to more nuclear power decades ago. France did it.

if only it did not create toxic, radioactive waste that will endure beyond how long our civilization is likely to last and for which we can't agree on storage methods to contain it.

PV and wind create toxic waste that will stay toxic forever. And they create more of it (per kWh). If you think toxic waste is a serious problem then you should favor nuclear power over PV in particular.

Did it become clear what "same standards" means?