It's a bit warm/ wet/ cold outside

[Hawkmumbler]

Indeed. The time for moderate progression away from fossil fuels has passed, now we must phase them out in the space of years, if not months.

[TordelBack]

I must apologise sincerely to Sharky for being rude and dismissive - I'm particularly grumpy after a long day, and some grotty weather seems to be following me around, but those are no excuses.

I'm sorry for my snarky and dismissive remarks, Mark, they were uncalled for.

So.

I do appreciate that oil-like hydrocarbons can be of non-biological origin, and that extensive deposits may exist and may be successfully exploited. My attitude is that this is another lethal 'don't worry, something sciencey will come along, it always does' distraction, an excuse to keep driving, keep flying, Malthus has always been wrong thus far. If we have limitless resources of oil, great, it'll get us out into space, it'll make the housings for our uploaded consciousnesses, whatever: super. But now is not the time.  Now is the time to treat oil like necessary poison, not the free lunch that has all but killed us.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, which I had the great pleasure of re-reading this Summer, Atticus keeps telling Scout and Jem "It's not time to worry yet". It's an endearing parental reassurance, a warning against needless grief: but despite the general wisdom of the axiom, ultimately events overtake his predictions, and he's proved wrong. It's time to worry now, Scout.

[The Legendary Shark]

I've just discovered something called a Molten Salt Reactor and it's kind of blown my mind a bit. In a MSR, the coolant (molten salt) also contains the nuclear fuel - so it can't melt down. Let me just repeat that - it can't melt down. That's amazing.

Hit one of these reactors with a missile or have the staff all get drunk and fall asleep on Christmas Eve and... Nothing. The reactor's not pressurised (unlike a conventional reactor, which has to run at ~160 atmospheres to stop the water turning into explosive hydrogen) and so if the molten salt leaks out or is left unattended it just cools down into a virtually inert lump.

Molten salt reactors can recycle a lot more of their own waste. Noxious beasties are drawn out of the fuel as gases, processed and then returned as fuel. There is waste but it's less toxic and about 1/3 that of a conventional reactor. These reactors do not yield weapons-grade waste products. Maybe that's why they seem to be keeping this technology off the radar...

Still, there seem to be plenty of companies at least ostensibly looking into this technology, which has been kicking around since at least the 1960s, here's the website of one of them. Let's hope those high-I.Q. boys out there can pull this together - it seems like a win/win to me. And no need for magic or bottled stars at all!

I posted this in 2015. There are technologies out there we should be using, and could have been using for ages. Here's a thought - instead of letting all those carbon taxes go into pension funds, stocks and shares and Al Gore's pocket, why not use them to fund projects like this?

It can be done, probably quite quickly if we put our minds to it, without having to abandon plastics at the same time. Sort the energy first because we'll still need plastics for building electric vehicles and such. Then we can use our new energy sources to find alternatives to plastics (hemp seems like a really good option).
This is not to say there can't be overlap, we could do both at once but the energy problem must, in my opinion, take priority.

[The Legendary Shark]

No problem, Tordels - I took no offence and meant none myself. There's a lot of emotion around this subject so it's completely understandable when a bit leaks out.

In other news, I've been working in the lashing down rain myself all day, too - so I'm a bit grumpy myself

[shaolin_monkey]

Someone earlier mentioned nuclear, and that one of the issues is the half-life of the nuclear waste.  Interestingly, CO2 in the atmosphere isn't removed from the atmosphere for many thousands of years longer than the half life of nuclear waste, so the argument is that in terms of time and damage to the planet, nuclear is still far superior than fossil fuels for our energy.  I'll see if I can find the article where this was discussed.

I've always been against nuclear as a go to for fossil fuel replacement, but in the short term it may well bolster our y demand while we wean ourselves off fossil fuels and on to renewables.   I've been chatting to a couple of nuclear physicists on Twitter, and all of them have advocated a new type of salt reactor the mechanism of which can avoid meltdowns and similar accidents altogether. One off them supplied me some reading materials on it.  I'll see I can dig them out.

Either way, energy derived fro the burning of oil, regardless of source,  should be completely off the table.

[shaolin_monkey]

So, as I said, I have been very much against nuclear, particularly due to the Fukushima, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Windscale accidents. 

However, the actual mortality rate of this power source is surprisingly low, accidents included, compared to other energy sources. Naturally, the mortality rate for coal tops the list — more here:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/


Here's the link to the salt reactor I mentioned. Note it is set out by a company affiliated with the nuclear industry, so bias is assumed.  Interesting, nonetheless:

https://www.moltexenergy.com/stablesaltreactors/


Check out the exec summary on this document (page 15 onwards) which discusses integrating nuclear with renewables to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, and with the targets of the Paris summit in mind.  However, bear in in this document was produced by the nuclear energy industry, so bias is assumed:

http://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2019/7299-system-costs.pdf?utm_source=mnb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pressrelease

[shaolin_monkey]

Still on the subject of nuclear as a viable stop-gap onside renewables, check out this World Nuclear report today.

Here are some take-aways:


Output grew 2.4% in 2018.
(1.8% due to China)
Price increased 23% in last decade.
(Wind -69%, solar -88%.)

Takes 5-17 yrs longer to build than wind/solar.


https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/IMG/pdf/wnisr2019-lr.pdf

[shaolin_monkey]

From the same report:

Renewables Continue to Thrive
Ɇ A record 165 GW of renewables were added to the world's power grids in 2018, up from 157 GW added the previous year. The nuclear operating capacity increased by 9 GW6 to reach 370 GW (excluding 25 GW in LTO), a new historic maxi- mum, slightly exceeding the previous peak of 368 GW in 2006.
Ɇ Globally, wind power output grew by 29% in 2018, solar by 13%, nuclear by 2.4%. Compared to a decade ago, non-hydro renewables generate over 1,900 TWh more power, exceeding coal and natural gas, while nuclear produces less.
Ɇ Over the past decade, levelized cost estimates for utility-scale solar dropped by 88%, wind by 69%, while nuclear increased by 23%. Renewables now come in below the cost of coal and natural gas.
Climate Change and Nuclear Power
Ɇ To protect the climate, we must abate the most carbon at the least cost and in the least time, so we must pay attention to carbon, cost, and time, not to carbon alone.
Ɇ Non-Nuclear Options Save More Carbon Per Dollar. In many nuclear countries, new renewables can now compete eco- nomically with existing nuclear power plants. The closure of uneconomic reactors will not directly save CO2 emissions but can indirectly save more CO2 than closing a coal-fired plant, if the nuclear plant's larger saved operating costs are rein- vested in efficiency or cheap modern renewables that in turn displace more fossil-fueled generation.
Ɇ Non-Nuclear Options Save More Carbon Per Year. While current nuclear programs are particularly slow, current renewables programs are particularly fast. New nuclear plants take 5–17 years longer to build than utility-scale solar or onshore wind power, so existing fossil-fueled plants emit far more CO2 while awaiting substitution by the nuclear option. Stabilizing the climate is urgent, nuclear power is slow.

[TordelBack]

I can't argue with the (heartening) numbers, and I'm certainly no natural fan of nuclear, but surely the current problem is providing a necessary backup for renewables during inevitable downtime? No question that maximising renewables is the way to go, but they are not going to meet needs in the short to medium term, so the pressure for always-on coal/oil/gas-fired plants has to be replaced by something.  The cost and speed arguments are interesting, but I don't see how focusing solely on renewables is realistic.

[Professor Bear]

Who has more money for political donations: a solar panel producer or the nuclear industry?  Things follow the path of least resistance from whatever answer to that question you think is accurate, hence my problem with nuclear is that once you do the nuke lobby's work of normalising usage and putting reactors in cities, it will become our default solution and the phasing-in of renewables will slow, if not halt entirely.  Why do we need to keep looking for pipe-dream solar solutions when we already have nuclear power up and running? Besides, don't wind turbines disrupt the view from your golf course?  Solar panels are kind of unsightly too, now I think of it.

[TordelBack]

Very good points, but it assumes the chosen alternative to nuclear will be, or even can be, renewables - I'd be very concerned that it won't be. Normalising nuclear may be something nobody sane wants, but we may have left the 'wants' stage a while back.

[Professor Bear]

Very good points, but it assumes the chosen alternative to nuclear will be, or even can be, renewables

Your optimism was contagious.  In truth, I don't believe for a moment that the solutions to our problems will come under capitalism.  Our best hope is that the rich can find a way to save themselves so that our species can endure for a little while longer in a Martian dome or a reinforced bunker somewhere.

[TordelBack]

I do wonder if we'll ever hear any western leader admit that this ultimate global cock-up is a direct result of the pseudo-capitalist system, in the same way they so readily demonise the local failures of pseudo-communism.

Doing a bit of CPD on the Neolithic last week, and it was very hard to get away from the idea that this awful pass we've come to has been inevitable since a Natufian noticed that some of the collected grains she'd dropped a few weeks earlier were sprouting outside the hut, and thought she could save herself a hell of a lot of walking by repeating the incident on a larger scale. A fatal flaw in human reasoning accidentally exploited by the genus Triticum to spread its descendants across the globe for a handful of millennia before crashing the whole fecking planet.

I'd like to believe that we have the intellectual and technological tools to break the cycle of greed, but unfortunately I have the internet, so I can't even pretend to myself.

[shaolin_monkey]

Just want to give a shout out to Phil Kingston, father of my mate Martin. This 83 year old (pictured in the middle) was one of the protestors with the fire engine at the Treasury today.

Absolute legend.

[shaolin_monkey]

Our best hope is that the rich can find a way to save themselves so that our species can endure for a little while longer in a Martian dome or a reinforced bunker somewhere.

Don't worry P. Bear - they're already on it. This is an excerpt from 'This Is Not A Drill', the Extinction Rebellion handbook.