Um … isn’t the other party doing the same thing but with corporations? Would you rather have deadbeat human beings who can’t find jobs on the dole or deadbeat Haliburton corporations who can’t do the work for which they contract and then keep getting no bid contracts anyway?

Here’s the way it works. There exists a political party in the US that relies on people NEEDING gov’t handouts. So, if you can shrink the economy, by whatever means, you have people lose jobs, $, etc. This then allows this party to then
“come to the rescue”. This means more votes and power.

Enjoy.

I know we’re mostly on the same side on this. We’re arguing relatively minor points about renewables, but major ones about nukes.

We need generation capacity that is as robust and can supplement the renewable sources during time of higher demand and lower output.

And therein lies the beauty of solar energy. Right when we need it most. Right when all other power sources are at their most expensive, such as powering up plants that have been shut down since yesterday afternoon, which is inefficient, right when everyone (except me) cranks up their A/Cs, solar power is producing its peak output!!

It’s a beautiful thing.

And, whether cars are powered by capacitors or batteries, the result is the same, yes, charge them at night, discharge them during the day. There are, of course, other ways to store energy.

Hydrogen, for example, is not a fuel. It takes more energy to split water than you get back, but not that much more. When solar or wind is producing more than we need, it can be splitting hydrogen for a power plant right next door. Hydrogen is hard to transport, but not that hard to store in a big tank. Solar water heat can also be used to heat water in large tanks to minimize the number of degrees that the hydrogen must heat the water to make steam for turbines.

Plenty of good ways to reduce our need and store energy for when we need it.

Of course, energy conservation is the cheapest and most effective means of “energy production” there is. Just use less. Plenty of technologies to do that too. All of them are cheaper than any means of power production.

So, we need to find someplace stable through major tectonic shifts. Such a place simply does not exist.

I agree with your first sentence but disagree with the second.

The Pre-Cambrian Shield is among the most stable rock formations on earth. Plainly put, it just ain’t going anywhere. It won’t be until North America collides with Asia is there expected to be any possible geological activity, and that won’t happen for several tens of millions of years. Being in the center of the continent, it is remote that the Shield would have any geological activity even then.

While I freely admit shit happens, burying radioactive waste in the Shield would be a safe course. BTW, much of the uranium used by the US currently comes from Canada and the Pre-Cambrian Shield.

While nuclear does have its safety problems I strongly believe they can be worked out with a little engineering. Renewable energy sources are great and should be encouraged, unfortunately they are too dependent upon weather to be a reliable, steady source.

If you ever visit Niagara Falls, compare it at 3:00 PM and then at 3:00AM. The daytime has about ½ the possible water flowing over it and in the early morning about 5-10%. The rest is diverted to the generators. While the Niagara generators are going full steam, the coal and gas fired generators power down and save money. We need generation capacity that is as robust and can supplement the renewable sources during time of higher demand and lower output.

Recently Marc Perkel posted a thread about using high capacity capacitors in vehicles to power cars, putting the excess energy back into the grid during the day (high demand periods), and charging them at low demand periods. All this would fit nicely with unpredictable renewable energy sources.

BTW, I’m on your side here.

#94, Bobbo,

Renewable are dependable. The sun does shine ALL THE TIME, and the wind does blow ALL THE TIME.

I have to ask. What color is the sky where you live? Around here it is sometimes blue, sometimes white/gray, sometimes a combination of the two, and black (with little spots of twinklies) about half the time.

Actually, when the sun is shining it is often not windy. When the wind is blowing it is often not sunny. This is true a large percentage of the time in a large variety of locations. This is useful information for creating a mix of the two that will be a lot closer to a steady base load. A little bit of energy storage thrown in and voila.

And, by me, the sky is currently blue with some white blobs in it.

Seriously, there is nothing delusional about saying that wind, solar, tidal, wave, and geothermal can definitely handle a big chunk of our energy. And, by the time we need to make it 100%, 10 years from now if we take up the Gore challenge, we will have vastly better energy storage techniques. Perhaps we will even be able to use our car batteries, charged overnight, to provide power back to the grid during the day, all with net metering, of course.

Since you have an unfounded faith in the ability of humans to solve anything with technology, you should easily be able to convince yourself that this too is solvable. Certainly, the problems are more surmountable than those of nuclear power.

Personally, I’m not really sure we can engineer our way out of our current situation. I just know we need to try like hell.

Thus far, I am aware of very few, possibly zero, cases where we have solved a problem with technology without creating an even bigger problem than we solved. Here in NYC, we once had a problem with noisy smelly horses. We solved that problem … with automobiles.

!00–Paddy==don’t get so crusty. The mantle may be immune to ground water but depending on the magical spell you use to get nuke waste into the mantle could be the same magic also introduce water? Course, your magic is so very obviously different than my magic, so we can only tell with a spell off.

The solution to long term nuclear waste storage is simple. Only it is too complicated to do.

I’ve gotta side with bobbo on this one. We’re talking about storing something safely with half lives on the order of hundreds of millions of years, in this case, I’m talking about the depleted uranium that we currently use to make armor piercing bullets. But, if I remember correctly, and I may not, the half lives of the radioactive waste is much longer than a mere 100K years as well.

So, we need to find someplace stable through major tectonic shifts. Such a place simply does not exist.

Let’s also not forget that as yet, not one gram has been stored in such a way that anyone would even claim that this has been done.

Humans are a very short-sighted species. Our short-sightedness may well be our death.

It is political because people like you who don’t even have a 5th grade level of science knowledge get to vote. And you vote for people similar to yourself.

Renewable are dependable. The sun does shine ALL THE TIME, and the wind does blow ALL THE TIME.

I have to ask. What color is the sky where you live? Around here it is sometimes blue, sometimes white/gray, sometimes a combination of the two, and black (with little spots of twinklies) about half the time.

Looking out the window, it is dead calm. The wind turbine in the distance isn’t turning and our neighbor’s flags aren’t moving. But on the other hand, there isn’t a cloud in the sky.

Oh I’m sure that somewhere the wind is blowing strong enough to power some energy. Only the few plants that are still open here require more power than what the wind has today.

So, impliedly the political problems prevent the disposal of nuke waste. How does that make the problem go away?

Send it to the mantle. The storage problems aren’t technical, they are political.