something serious for a change

[baratron]

I'm a woolly left-wing liberal, who is carfree by choice and recycles everything. But news that Greenpeace have been protesting against proposed new nuclear power plants just seems wrong to me. What, exactly, are they proposing as the alternative? Lovely though it would be for us all to reduce our use of petrol and electricity and for people to start walking and cycling everywhere, I can't see it happening.

In an ideal world, wind turbines would be shiny and wonderful and provide vast amounts of power. But in practice, they are noisy, and a large number of them are needed to produce a small amount of electricity. Many of the most suitable sites for them in the UK are areas of outstanding natural beauty, such as hill and mountain tops, and/or interfere with wildlife, such as offshore locations. Also, they are subject to the weather. Yes, it is often windy, but not always.

I don't know what the answer is. Ideally we'd use a large range of different non-polluting renewable sources. But replacing the entire country's fossil fuel stations with wind turbines isn't going to work. Nuclear power could be a short to medium-term solution to ease the transition between fossil fuels and renewable power.

What do you think?

[Poll #623017]

I'm not very impressed with Greenpeace for saying that nuclear power stations are a terrorist target. I can't really explain why this bothers me, except that I think that Fear of terrorism is the way the terrorists win. Let's take people's current Fear of Terrorism and combine it with their existing Fear of Radiation and use those emotions to win the argument, rather than science, logic and rational debate. *sigh*

Comments

[nmc.livejournal.com]

This may or may not piss others off, but I've pretty much been under the impression that Greenpeace went the way of PETA years ago. In that, basically, they started from a sensible core that I agreed with, and then went fucking insane about it.

As for the transition ... I'm not sure there's going to be a full-on transition without a major technological breakthrough. There's a lot of little things that could help a great deal, though.

Here's an example. I live in Utah. It's a desert. There are a whole lot of really sunny days. If the price of photovoltaic roof shingles became more competitive, a number of the power issues here would be lessened. It's not that said shingles are going to generate all the electricity the building needs, but generating even 10% of one's power on-site would be a nice little improvement.

Just in general, it'd be nice if people thought less about ways to improve energy generation problems totally, or 80+% of the way, and more about little things that'd help. Roofs, for example. Solar cells and small wind turbines for those. Maybe a small dam here and there. A small wind farm where it works. Find the little ways to improve efficiency, and then require them. Make the larger ways to efficiency more competitive. Stuff like that.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I know where you're coming from. I've never really decided what I think about Greenpeace, ever since I heard about the Rainbow Warrior as a child. I do have an opinion on PETA, though - I am a vegan who cannot stand PETA's militance. The "highlight" for me was when they ran a campaign about the evils of the dairy industry to encourage teenage girls to stop drinking cow milk.

Now, I believe that the dairy industry is not kind to cows, and that cow milk is not the most ideal for humans to drink. However, running a campaign aimed at young kids who probably have a pretty unhealthy diet is not on in my book. Milk might be the only source of protein, calcium & B-vitamins that a faddy teenager who thinks she's overweight despite being a size 6 gets. And how many parents will be willing to swap cheap cow milk for expensive, weird-tasting soy milk? Do PETA expect the kids to pay for it themselves?

My belief is that information should be available for kids who become vegetarian or vegan off their own backs, so they can find the resources to do so healthily - making sure that animal products are replaced with nutrient-rich plant products (not all soy milk has calcium added, f'rex). But campaigning, trying to convert people, should only be aimed at adults.

[inquis.livejournal.com]

And there are some of us who would be really sick if I tried to be vegan :o)

I'm all for nuclear power too. But I think they need to make it clear to everyone what safety measures are in place, and make sure that corners are not allowed to be cut where they might pose a risk of a disaster. OK, it's never going to be risk free, but neither's burning fossil fuels and that's just a longer term environmental effect.

[tropism.livejournal.com]

Actually, one of the biggest problems with solar energy is simply that you only get it during the day. You've got to store it somehow if you want to use it at night, and this generally involves batteries. Because of the limited life of batteries, this can be a losing proposition. Of course, there are alternate ways of storing energy, but these generally require somewhat radical solutions and large tracts of land. (For example, you could use excess power to pump water uphill into a large basin. At night, you run the water back downhill, through turbines, in order to generate power.) Windpower also has this same problem.

I completely agree, however, that we need to increase efficiency, and even solar panels will help reduce power-generation demands during peak consumption hours, which tend to be during the day.

If oil really is running out soon, I think that the best stopgap measures will be nuclear combined with steam-cracking biomass into diesel fuel, via some method that was devised a few years ago. (Feed garbage in. Heat under pressure with water. You get natural gas, fuel oil, and inorganic detritus. Generally, the amount of natural gas given off by the process is enough to run the process, so you don't have to put any external energy into the system once you get it running, other than the biomass. And, of course, plants -are- probably the most efficient solar-collection devices extant. ;))

[nmc.livejournal.com]

I was about to disagree with you, but I think we actually agree.

As a source for powering the grid, I don't think solar works all that well, for all the listed reasons.

I do think it works well for a near-to-usage supplement. Put solar cells on a roof. If it generates power, use it. If it's more power than you need, sell it back to the grid. Someone wants it. If it's not enough power, get what you need extra from the grid. If they're not generating anything, just use the grid. No batteries required, just some circuitry (which should have a long life if you overbuild it).

If we were doing this, as a species, we wouldn't erase the need for the grid, and the coal / gas / nuclear plants that power the grid. However, we might be able to decrease the power requirements on the grid, which in turn would mean a need for fewer plants, or running the plants less hard. Which in turn reduces the demand for the fuel to power them.

Oh, and when it comes down to it, this planet doesn't have to last until the death of the species, the heat death of the universe and/or the death of the sun. It just has to last long enough for us to find somewhere else to go.