Are even people who trust the science of climate change in denial of its seriousness?

[skepticalbip]

A nuclide that's produced in 10% of the fissions and that has a mean life of about 1000 years will thus have about 10¹⁶ decays/s. That's about 2.7*10⁵ curies of radioactive decay. Since a lethal dose for ingested material is about a millicurie ( Curie), that's about 2.7*10⁸ lethal doses. So even with great amounts of dilution, I wouldn't want to call nuclear-energy use intrinsically safe.

Actually, that sounds pretty safe. Imagine you just dump all that crap out in the ocean somewhere. How many would die? Few if any.

There was talk at one time of dumping the spent fuel rods back where the uranium for them was originally mined. The anti-nuke folks freaked, apparently unable to grasp that uranium comes from "Mother Earth" and we only use it until it isn't hot enough to be efficient so the idea was dropped.

 

[OLDMAN]

Why are seven billion people going to die? Oceans rising a hundred meters is not that dramatic a change in land mass. If you only knew how much food we throw away every single day. Enough to feed the world twice over. The planet will survive even if mankind doesn't.

Yammering about how much food we supposedly throw away won't change the fact that when our food production goes down people are going to starve. Fairly small changes in production end up translating into large price changes--the market isn't as elastic as you think it is.

Small changes in food production? My understanding, granted I'm no scientist, is that the weather will destabilize to the point that agriculture as we know it will be problematic.

So, along with all renewable energy, we need new food supplies.

First, over half of the food produced in NA, doesn't get to people's stomachs. Secondly, sea levels last year rose 3 mm. Even if the entire Antarctic ocean ice sheet melted sea levels would only rise 56 inches. It is very doubtful the land ice will melt any time soon. So we are not looking a 100 meter rises in ocean levels.

 

[bilby]

Why are seven billion people going to die? Oceans rising a hundred meters is not that dramatic a change in land mass. If you only knew how much food we throw away every single day. Enough to feed the world twice over. The planet will survive even if mankind doesn't.

Yammering about how much food we supposedly throw away won't change the fact that when our food production goes down people are going to starve. Fairly small changes in production end up translating into large price changes--the market isn't as elastic as you think it is.

Small changes in food production? My understanding, granted I'm no scientist, is that the weather will destabilize to the point that agriculture as we know it will be problematic.

So, along with all renewable energy, we need new food supplies.

First, over half of the food produced in NA, doesn't get to people's stomachs. Secondly, sea levels last year rose 3 mm. Even if the entire Antarctic ocean ice sheet melted sea levels would only rise 56 inches. It is very doubtful the land ice will melt any time soon. So we are not looking a 100 meter rises in ocean levels.

Sea levels are unaffected by the melting of floating ice. Only ice that is grounded - land ice - can affect sea levels, either by melting, or by flowing as glaciers to the coast, where it starts to add to the sea level as soon as it gets below sea level, and stops adding to sea level as soon as it floats.

The various Antarctic ice sheets would add nothing directly to sea level if they melted; however they do act to slow the rate of flow of the coastal glaciers that flow into them; by breaking away from the shore, they allow land ice to become sea ice (and hence to raise sea level) more rapidly than before.

In summary, all sea level rise comes from changes to the amount of land ice. if all the Antarctic ocean ice sheets melted, sea levels wouldn't even rise 56 thousandths of an inch.

 

[barbos]

Time is running out for nuclear.
Solar is getting cheaper and better, nuclear is not getting better and getting more expensive.
Once they solve electricity storage problem it is over for anything other than solar and wind.

If.

If they solve the storage problem.

If they solve the problems associated with controlled fusion, it is over for coal, oil, gas, or fission. But I am not holding my breath for that, either.

In the meantime, fission is a solved problem; using coal as the stop-gap rather than fission is unconscionable; but we persist in doing it, because we are largely an irrational species.

No "Ifs" just "whens". In fact, you can go 100% solar&wind right now, it's just a bit expensive and inconvenient but in principle we can do it with current battery technology. All we need is incremental improvements in cost.

Fusion, you should not hold your breath for that.

Such power would be incredibly expensive. There's no battery technology that delivers power at anything like current market rates even if you don't consider buying the power in the first place.

No, it would not be incredibly expensive.
Let me do back of the envelope calculation for you.
Lead Acid batteries are cheap, 50 Ah 12volt is $50.
10 such batteries (500 bucks) will give you 5kwh of charge. That should be enough for a typical one person apartment, even considering that it has a 15 year old inefficient fridge.
Lead acid will have no troubles lasting 2-3 years. And if you get modern fridge, LED lighting and do you laundry on sunny days or at least during a day you will be able to get by with 2-3 kWh of storage. Now add to this nation wide grid connecting you to all other sunny places and you will be independent of the local weather conditions.

So basically, electrical storage will cost you $200 a year, that's less than most people spend on cell phones. The truth is, electricity is currently dirt cheap and making it slightly more expensive but clean will not break you.

 

[barbos]

A nuclide that's produced in 10% of the fissions and that has a mean life of about 1000 years will thus have about 10¹⁶ decays/s. That's about 2.7*10⁵ curies of radioactive decay. Since a lethal dose for ingested material is about a millicurie ( Curie), that's about 2.7*10⁸ lethal doses. So even with great amounts of dilution, I wouldn't want to call nuclear-energy use intrinsically safe.

Actually, that sounds pretty safe. Imagine you just dump all that crap out in the ocean somewhere. How many would die? Few if any.

There was talk at one time of dumping the spent fuel rods back where the uranium for them was originally mined. The anti-nuke folks freaked, apparently unable to grasp that uranium comes from "Mother Earth" and we only use it until it isn't hot enough to be efficient so the idea was dropped.

Apparently it is you who is unable to grasp the fact that nuclear waste is much much much much much much more active than starting fuel.
So anti-nuke folks freaked out correctly, and you need to educate yourself a little.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Why are seven billion people going to die? Oceans rising a hundred meters is not that dramatic a change in land mass. If you only knew how much food we throw away every single day. Enough to feed the world twice over. The planet will survive even if mankind doesn't.

Yammering about how much food we supposedly throw away won't change the fact that when our food production goes down people are going to starve. Fairly small changes in production end up translating into large price changes--the market isn't as elastic as you think it is.

Small changes in food production? My understanding, granted I'm no scientist, is that the weather will destabilize to the point that agriculture as we know it will be problematic.

So, along with all renewable energy, we need new food supplies.

???

I'm saying that these days we see big changes in price with small changes in supply--evidence the demand is quite inelastic which strongly suggests there isn't that much true waste.

I'm *NOT* saying that global warming will only cause small changes in the food supply.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A nuclide that's produced in 10% of the fissions and that has a mean life of about 1000 years will thus have about 10¹⁶ decays/s. That's about 2.7*10⁵ curies of radioactive decay. Since a lethal dose for ingested material is about a millicurie ( Curie), that's about 2.7*10⁸ lethal doses. So even with great amounts of dilution, I wouldn't want to call nuclear-energy use intrinsically safe.

Actually, that sounds pretty safe. Imagine you just dump all that crap out in the ocean somewhere. How many would die? Few if any.

There was talk at one time of dumping the spent fuel rods back where the uranium for them was originally mined. The anti-nuke folks freaked, apparently unable to grasp that uranium comes from "Mother Earth" and we only use it until it isn't hot enough to be efficient so the idea was dropped.

The fuel rods are *FAR* hotter than the original uranium.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

First, over half of the food produced in NA, doesn't get to people's stomachs. Secondly, sea levels last year rose 3 mm. Even if the entire Antarctic ocean ice sheet melted sea levels would only rise 56 inches. It is very doubtful the land ice will melt any time soon. So we are not looking a 100 meter rises in ocean levels.

The melting of the arctic ice has *NO* effect on sea level and thus the current lack of rise doesn't mean it's not going to be an issue. The current rise is mostly just warmer water.

 

[skepticalbip]

A nuclide that's produced in 10% of the fissions and that has a mean life of about 1000 years will thus have about 10¹⁶ decays/s. That's about 2.7*10⁵ curies of radioactive decay. Since a lethal dose for ingested material is about a millicurie ( Curie), that's about 2.7*10⁸ lethal doses. So even with great amounts of dilution, I wouldn't want to call nuclear-energy use intrinsically safe.

Actually, that sounds pretty safe. Imagine you just dump all that crap out in the ocean somewhere. How many would die? Few if any.

There was talk at one time of dumping the spent fuel rods back where the uranium for them was originally mined. The anti-nuke folks freaked, apparently unable to grasp that uranium comes from "Mother Earth" and we only use it until it isn't hot enough to be efficient so the idea was dropped.

Apparently it is you who is unable to grasp the fact that nuclear waste is much much much much much much more active than starting fuel.
So anti-nuke folks freaked out correctly, and you need to educate yourself a little.

Of course the fuel rods are hotter than ore because the origional uranium ore is processed to eliminate other elements and concentrate the U-235 which is then embeded in carbon to make rods. Like smelting iron ore to get to the iron and eliminate the slag so the iron is useful. The process proposed to return the spent fuel rods to the mine was to grind up the rods and mix the bits with as much dirt, rock, etc. that it was originally seperated from. If it takes several tons of ore to get an ounce of U-235, then when the spent rod is ground and mixed with as much fill as was originally mined to get that ounce the result will not be as hot as it was when mined because some of the U-235 would have undergone fission and would no longer be uranium. Essentially the idea was to have the fill (containing the ground spent fuel rods) with the same or less concentration of radioactive material as was removed from the mine.

Even the yellow cake isn't that dangerous because it is mostly U-238 which isn't radioactive. The U-235 is seperated from the yellow cake through a lot more processing.

 

[bilby]

Time is running out for nuclear.
Solar is getting cheaper and better, nuclear is not getting better and getting more expensive.
Once they solve electricity storage problem it is over for anything other than solar and wind.

If.

If they solve the storage problem.

If they solve the problems associated with controlled fusion, it is over for coal, oil, gas, or fission. But I am not holding my breath for that, either.

In the meantime, fission is a solved problem; using coal as the stop-gap rather than fission is unconscionable; but we persist in doing it, because we are largely an irrational species.

No "Ifs" just "whens". In fact, you can go 100% solar&wind right now, it's just a bit expensive and inconvenient but in principle we can do it with current battery technology. All we need is incremental improvements in cost.

Fusion, you should not hold your breath for that.

Such power would be incredibly expensive. There's no battery technology that delivers power at anything like current market rates even if you don't consider buying the power in the first place.

No, it would not be incredibly expensive.
Let me do back of the envelope calculation for you.
Lead Acid batteries are cheap, 50 Ah 12volt is $50.
10 such batteries (500 bucks) will give you 5kwh of charge. That should be enough for a typical one person apartment, even considering that it has a 15 year old inefficient fridge.
Lead acid will have no troubles lasting 2-3 years. And if you get modern fridge, LED lighting and do you laundry on sunny days or at least during a day you will be able to get by with 2-3 kWh of storage. Now add to this nation wide grid connecting you to all other sunny places and you will be independent of the local weather conditions.

So basically, electrical storage will cost you $200 a year, that's less than most people spend on cell phones. The truth is, electricity is currently dirt cheap and making it slightly more expensive but clean will not break you.

According to my last power bill, I use about twice the average household consumption of electricity in my city - I use about 2kW, mostly for refrigeration, air-conditioning, cooking and hot water. In the summer, the fridges and a/c often run through the night. This costs me about $1,000 per quarter; and for that, the power company has responsibility for all generating and maintenance costs, other than the occasional light globe. (People are up in arms about paying so much - electricity prices here have trebled in the past five years).

A standard home solar power system that would fit on the available roof space has a peak output of 4kW, but only generates that in the middle of the day - according to the Queensland government, I can expect to generate 16.8kWh per day (0.7kW) on average from a 4kW rated system with correct situating and alignment. That's about a third of the power I actually use; so I will need to find roof space for another two sets of panels; or rely on neighbours to have more than their 1kW requirement to sell to me; or on someone to set up some more panels in a field near the city, or on a warehouse or shopping mall roof. Still, let's assume that someone is happy to sell me their surplus, or rent some more space to me; perhaps I could roof over some of the backyard and install more panels. No matter where the power is collected, the question is, how much storage do I need?

The 5kWh you suggest will last me about two and a half hours. Now, around here, night falls at about 19:00 local time in the summer, and the sun rises at about 04:30 - that means I need at least 10 hours of storage (more in reality, because in winter the nights are longer; and full output from the solar panels won't be achievable until some time after dawn, and will drop off well before sunset; and because some days it will be cloudy). 10 hours at 2kW is 20kWh; I'm going to need twice that to cover for one overcast day - that's $2000+ worth of batteries. That's a very lowball estimate of 10x the cost you suggest. If I want to be able to cope with an entire week of overcast conditions (more likely), I will need around 350kWh of storage - that's 70x your estimate - about $1000 per month. Just for storage. Three times what I currently pay for electricity. And I still have to pay for $20,000 of solar panels and inverters - which will also need replacing every 5-10 years. And I still have my milk go sour if there are eight cloudy days in a row; and I have to find ventilated shed space for 700 lead/acid batteries.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

No, it would not be incredibly expensive.
Let me do back of the envelope calculation for you.
Lead Acid batteries are cheap, 50 Ah 12volt is $50.
10 such batteries (500 bucks) will give you 5kwh of charge. That should be enough for a typical one person apartment, even considering that it has a 15 year old inefficient fridge.
Lead acid will have no troubles lasting 2-3 years. And if you get modern fridge, LED lighting and do you laundry on sunny days or at least during a day you will be able to get by with 2-3 kWh of storage. Now add to this nation wide grid connecting you to all other sunny places and you will be independent of the local weather conditions.

So basically, electrical storage will cost you $200 a year, that's less than most people spend on cell phones. The truth is, electricity is currently dirt cheap and making it slightly more expensive but clean will not break you.

Your 5kwh for the overnight use might work. Lets look at what happens, though--in a single year those batteries are only storing about half that power. Oops, the power goes out before morning comes around.

Lets double the size of the battery pack. Now you'll get almost two years before the lights go out. $500/year, not $200/year.

Second, you used cheap starter batteries that won't last in this use. Digging around the first proper solar battery I find is $200 for 1.5kwh. Thus we are looking at more like $650/year. Thus your battery cost for having the lights on at night is over 35 cents/kwh. Add in the cells and the inefficiencies of the system and we're around 50 cents/kwh.

To up things a bit more what happens on a cloudy day? Your pack will need to be several times bigger (although this has little effect on the replacement cost--the life goes up almost linearly.)

Some real world problems:

1) In such situations batteries are arranged in strings. Some number of batteries are connected in series and power an inverter. While you can run separate strings on separate inverters with no problem (other than the equipment cost) one string should only consist of batteries of the same age. If one dies you can't just replace it with a new one without asking for trouble down the road. You have to replace the whole string. (If you have one around with the same amount of life used you can swap it in--the issue is you can't mix performance and putting an old with a new in a string is mixing performance.)

2) In the real world people with non-grid solar normally go with an absolute minimum of power use from their batteries. For example, they'll have a gas-powered fridge.

 

[barbos]

No, it would not be incredibly expensive.
Let me do back of the envelope calculation for you.
Lead Acid batteries are cheap, 50 Ah 12volt is $50.
10 such batteries (500 bucks) will give you 5kwh of charge. That should be enough for a typical one person apartment, even considering that it has a 15 year old inefficient fridge.
Lead acid will have no troubles lasting 2-3 years. And if you get modern fridge, LED lighting and do you laundry on sunny days or at least during a day you will be able to get by with 2-3 kWh of storage. Now add to this nation wide grid connecting you to all other sunny places and you will be independent of the local weather conditions.

So basically, electrical storage will cost you $200 a year, that's less than most people spend on cell phones. The truth is, electricity is currently dirt cheap and making it slightly more expensive but clean will not break you.

Your 5kwh for the overnight use might work. Lets look at what happens, though--in a single year those batteries are only storing about half that power. Oops, the power goes out before morning comes around.

Lead acid last 2-3 years just fine, without 50% drop in capacity.

Lets double the size of the battery pack. Now you'll get almost two years before the lights go out. $500/year, not $200/year.

Second, you used cheap starter batteries that won't last in this use. Digging around the first proper solar battery I find is $200 for 1.5kwh.

That's $66 for 50ah 12 volt. I gave you $50 number, pretty close.

Thus we are looking at more like $650/year. Thus your battery cost for having the lights on at night is over 35 cents/kwh. Add in the cells and the inefficiencies of the system and we're around 50 cents/kwh.

You calculated worst case scenario and it is still less than most people spend on cell phones.

To up things a bit more what happens on a cloudy day? Your pack will need to be several times bigger (although this has little effect on the replacement cost--the life goes up almost linearly.)

I believe I answered that question, I suggested nation wide grid. Hard to imagine whole US under clouds.
and gas powered backup in case unimaginable happened.
And no, you don't need bigger battery pack regardless, you need bigger capacity of solar panels which can power you even during global clouding.
Fact is, it is doable with what we have now, and it is not terribly inconvenient.
What is really inconvenient is a corrupted system where established energy business decides to keep things unchanged.

 

[barbos]

A nuclide that's produced in 10% of the fissions and that has a mean life of about 1000 years will thus have about 10¹⁶ decays/s. That's about 2.7*10⁵ curies of radioactive decay. Since a lethal dose for ingested material is about a millicurie ( Curie), that's about 2.7*10⁸ lethal doses. So even with great amounts of dilution, I wouldn't want to call nuclear-energy use intrinsically safe.

Actually, that sounds pretty safe. Imagine you just dump all that crap out in the ocean somewhere. How many would die? Few if any.

There was talk at one time of dumping the spent fuel rods back where the uranium for them was originally mined. The anti-nuke folks freaked, apparently unable to grasp that uranium comes from "Mother Earth" and we only use it until it isn't hot enough to be efficient so the idea was dropped.

Apparently it is you who is unable to grasp the fact that nuclear waste is much much much much much much more active than starting fuel.
So anti-nuke folks freaked out correctly, and you need to educate yourself a little.

Of course the fuel rods are hotter than ore because the origional uranium ore is processed to eliminate other elements and concentrate the U-235 which is then embeded in carbon to make rods. Like smelting iron ore to get to the iron and eliminate the slag so the iron is useful. The process proposed to return the spent fuel rods to the mine was to grind up the rods and mix the bits with as much dirt, rock, etc. that it was originally seperated from. If it takes several tons of ore to get an ounce of U-235, then when the spent rod is ground and mixed with as much fill as was originally mined to get that ounce the result will not be as hot as it was when mined because some of the U-235 would have undergone fission and would no longer be uranium. Essentially the idea was to have the fill (containing the ground spent fuel rods) with the same or less concentration of radioactive material as was removed from the mine.

Even the yellow cake isn't that dangerous because it is mostly U-238 which isn't radioactive. The U-235 is seperated from the yellow cake through a lot more processing.

Dude, you really need to educate yourself a little.

 

[barbos]

Time is running out for nuclear.
Solar is getting cheaper and better, nuclear is not getting better and getting more expensive.
Once they solve electricity storage problem it is over for anything other than solar and wind.

If.

If they solve the storage problem.

If they solve the problems associated with controlled fusion, it is over for coal, oil, gas, or fission. But I am not holding my breath for that, either.

In the meantime, fission is a solved problem; using coal as the stop-gap rather than fission is unconscionable; but we persist in doing it, because we are largely an irrational species.

No "Ifs" just "whens". In fact, you can go 100% solar&wind right now, it's just a bit expensive and inconvenient but in principle we can do it with current battery technology. All we need is incremental improvements in cost.

Fusion, you should not hold your breath for that.

Such power would be incredibly expensive. There's no battery technology that delivers power at anything like current market rates even if you don't consider buying the power in the first place.

No, it would not be incredibly expensive.
Let me do back of the envelope calculation for you.
Lead Acid batteries are cheap, 50 Ah 12volt is $50.
10 such batteries (500 bucks) will give you 5kwh of charge. That should be enough for a typical one person apartment, even considering that it has a 15 year old inefficient fridge.
Lead acid will have no troubles lasting 2-3 years. And if you get modern fridge, LED lighting and do you laundry on sunny days or at least during a day you will be able to get by with 2-3 kWh of storage. Now add to this nation wide grid connecting you to all other sunny places and you will be independent of the local weather conditions.

So basically, electrical storage will cost you $200 a year, that's less than most people spend on cell phones. The truth is, electricity is currently dirt cheap and making it slightly more expensive but clean will not break you.

According to my last power bill, I use about twice the average household consumption of electricity in my city - I use about 2kW, mostly for refrigeration, air-conditioning, cooking and hot water. In the summer, the fridges and a/c often run through the night. This costs me about $1,000 per quarter; and for that, the power company has responsibility for all generating and maintenance costs, other than the occasional light globe. (People are up in arms about paying so much - electricity prices here have trebled in the past five years).

A standard home solar power system that would fit on the available roof space has a peak output of 4kW, but only generates that in the middle of the day - according to the Queensland government, I can expect to generate 16.8kWh per day (0.7kW) on average from a 4kW rated system with correct situating and alignment. That's about a third of the power I actually use; so I will need to find roof space for another two sets of panels; or rely on neighbours to have more than their 1kW requirement to sell to me; or on someone to set up some more panels in a field near the city, or on a warehouse or shopping mall roof. Still, let's assume that someone is happy to sell me their surplus, or rent some more space to me; perhaps I could roof over some of the backyard and install more panels. No matter where the power is collected, the question is, how much storage do I need?

The 5kWh you suggest will last me about two and a half hours. Now, around here, night falls at about 19:00 local time in the summer, and the sun rises at about 04:30 - that means I need at least 10 hours of storage (more in reality, because in winter the nights are longer; and full output from the solar panels won't be achievable until some time after dawn, and will drop off well before sunset; and because some days it will be cloudy). 10 hours at 2kW is 20kWh; I'm going to need twice that to cover for one overcast day - that's $2000+ worth of batteries. That's a very lowball estimate of 10x the cost you suggest. If I want to be able to cope with an entire week of overcast conditions (more likely), I will need around 350kWh of storage - that's 70x your estimate - about $1000 per month. Just for storage. Three times what I currently pay for electricity. And I still have to pay for $20,000 of solar panels and inverters - which will also need replacing every 5-10 years. And I still have my milk go sour if there are eight cloudy days in a row; and I have to find ventilated shed space for 700 lead/acid batteries.

I have to check but fridge should not be an issue. They are practically battery power capable nowdays.
A/C could be an issue but I suspect you live in poorly insulated house where everything is pretty much open all the time.
With properly insulated house you will not have much problem with solar powered A/C.
And electric water heater in Australia? are you insane? Last time I checked you had sun every day.

And again, I suggested nation wide grid for clouds.

 

[bilby]

Time is running out for nuclear.
Solar is getting cheaper and better, nuclear is not getting better and getting more expensive.
Once they solve electricity storage problem it is over for anything other than solar and wind.

If.

If they solve the storage problem.

If they solve the problems associated with controlled fusion, it is over for coal, oil, gas, or fission. But I am not holding my breath for that, either.

In the meantime, fission is a solved problem; using coal as the stop-gap rather than fission is unconscionable; but we persist in doing it, because we are largely an irrational species.

No "Ifs" just "whens". In fact, you can go 100% solar&wind right now, it's just a bit expensive and inconvenient but in principle we can do it with current battery technology. All we need is incremental improvements in cost.

Fusion, you should not hold your breath for that.

Such power would be incredibly expensive. There's no battery technology that delivers power at anything like current market rates even if you don't consider buying the power in the first place.

No, it would not be incredibly expensive.
Let me do back of the envelope calculation for you.
Lead Acid batteries are cheap, 50 Ah 12volt is $50.
10 such batteries (500 bucks) will give you 5kwh of charge. That should be enough for a typical one person apartment, even considering that it has a 15 year old inefficient fridge.
Lead acid will have no troubles lasting 2-3 years. And if you get modern fridge, LED lighting and do you laundry on sunny days or at least during a day you will be able to get by with 2-3 kWh of storage. Now add to this nation wide grid connecting you to all other sunny places and you will be independent of the local weather conditions.

So basically, electrical storage will cost you $200 a year, that's less than most people spend on cell phones. The truth is, electricity is currently dirt cheap and making it slightly more expensive but clean will not break you.

According to my last power bill, I use about twice the average household consumption of electricity in my city - I use about 2kW, mostly for refrigeration, air-conditioning, cooking and hot water. In the summer, the fridges and a/c often run through the night. This costs me about $1,000 per quarter; and for that, the power company has responsibility for all generating and maintenance costs, other than the occasional light globe. (People are up in arms about paying so much - electricity prices here have trebled in the past five years).

A standard home solar power system that would fit on the available roof space has a peak output of 4kW, but only generates that in the middle of the day - according to the Queensland government, I can expect to generate 16.8kWh per day (0.7kW) on average from a 4kW rated system with correct situating and alignment. That's about a third of the power I actually use; so I will need to find roof space for another two sets of panels; or rely on neighbours to have more than their 1kW requirement to sell to me; or on someone to set up some more panels in a field near the city, or on a warehouse or shopping mall roof. Still, let's assume that someone is happy to sell me their surplus, or rent some more space to me; perhaps I could roof over some of the backyard and install more panels. No matter where the power is collected, the question is, how much storage do I need?

The 5kWh you suggest will last me about two and a half hours. Now, around here, night falls at about 19:00 local time in the summer, and the sun rises at about 04:30 - that means I need at least 10 hours of storage (more in reality, because in winter the nights are longer; and full output from the solar panels won't be achievable until some time after dawn, and will drop off well before sunset; and because some days it will be cloudy). 10 hours at 2kW is 20kWh; I'm going to need twice that to cover for one overcast day - that's $2000+ worth of batteries. That's a very lowball estimate of 10x the cost you suggest. If I want to be able to cope with an entire week of overcast conditions (more likely), I will need around 350kWh of storage - that's 70x your estimate - about $1000 per month. Just for storage. Three times what I currently pay for electricity. And I still have to pay for $20,000 of solar panels and inverters - which will also need replacing every 5-10 years. And I still have my milk go sour if there are eight cloudy days in a row; and I have to find ventilated shed space for 700 lead/acid batteries.

I have to check but fridge should not be an issue. They are practically battery power capable nowdays.
A/C could be an issue but I suspect you live in poorly insulated house where everything is pretty much open all the time.

Indeed; almost all houses in Brisbane built more than 30 years ago were designed to be draughty - a/c is a recent luxury. But you are not going to persuade the 80% of Brisbanites who live in poorly insulated raised timber homes to demolish them and build something better suited to a/c.

With properly insulated house you will not have much problem with solar powered A/C.
And electric water heater in Australia? are you insane? Last time I checked you had sun every day.

We do have clouds here too

Again, there is a good historical reason for using electric water heaters - until recently electricity was dirt cheap, and solar hot water systems were expensive and unreliable. That's no longer true, but it will take a LONG time for people to change.

And again, I suggested nation wide grid for clouds.

Sure; and that is a good idea; but you still need enough storage to cover approx 16 hours a day when the sun is low in the sky - or below the horizon.

 

[barbos]

Yes, the problem is dirt cheap electricity, that's why it's being wasted.
With proper approach, solar is absolutely doable and in fact cheaper in a long run.
And convincing is actually pretty easy, just tax electricity to the level where people will start feeling it's not free and they are better do something with that hole and put some shades on windows or something.

Solar panels should be fine for 20 years, and electronics should last forever. I understand normal wear and tear is unavoidable, but properly made it will last practically forever or at least until the time it's cheap to replace.

 

[barbos]

And more about lead acid batteries.
The $50 for 50ah*12v I gave was the cost you pay to buy a new battery in a store.
This battery is not designed to be recycled or refurbished. It's designed to be convenient to use and then sent to recover lead only.
Actual ownership cost can be reduced for batteries which are specifically made to be rebuilt where you recycle and reuse most of it.
Lead acid battery is practically a plastic case, few chunks of lead, and sulfuric acid, if you design with idea of refurbishing it will cost almost nothing to own.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Why are seven billion people going to die? Oceans rising a hundred meters is not that dramatic a change in land mass. If you only knew how much food we throw away every single day. Enough to feed the world twice over. The planet will survive even if mankind doesn't.

Yammering about how much food we supposedly throw away won't change the fact that when our food production goes down people are going to starve. Fairly small changes in production end up translating into large price changes--the market isn't as elastic as you think it is.

Small changes in food production? My understanding, granted I'm no scientist, is that the weather will destabilize to the point that agriculture as we know it will be problematic.

So, along with all renewable energy, we need new food supplies.

???

I'm saying that these days we see big changes in price with small changes in supply--evidence the demand is quite inelastic which strongly suggests there isn't that much true waste.

I'm *NOT* saying that global warming will only cause small changes in the food supply.

Fine. I noticed that no one had mentioned weather destabilization, so I jumped in.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Your 5kwh for the overnight use might work. Lets look at what happens, though--in a single year those batteries are only storing about half that power. Oops, the power goes out before morning comes around.

Lead acid last 2-3 years just fine, without 50% drop in capacity.

I suggest you learn more about batteries. Lead acid batteries do not like being fully discharged. Furthermore, being discharged at all eats away at their life--about 500 cycles on each AH will reduce them to half.

Thus we are looking at more like $650/year. Thus your battery cost for having the lights on at night is over 35 cents/kwh. Add in the cells and the inefficiencies of the system and we're around 50 cents/kwh.

You calculated worst case scenario and it is still less than most people spend on cell phones.

50 cents/kwh will cause some major sticker shock.

To up things a bit more what happens on a cloudy day? Your pack will need to be several times bigger (although this has little effect on the replacement cost--the life goes up almost linearly.)

I believe I answered that question, I suggested nation wide grid. Hard to imagine whole US under clouds.
and gas powered backup in case unimaginable happened.
And no, you don't need bigger battery pack regardless, you need bigger capacity of solar panels which can power you even during global clouding.
Fact is, it is doable with what we have now, and it is not terribly inconvenient.
What is really inconvenient is a corrupted system where established energy business decides to keep things unchanged.

1) That's some major power cables.

2) A major winter storm will put large areas of the country under clouds for days on end.

3) You seem to have no regard for the cost of what you are proposing.

4) Just because you might be able to get by doing all your high power stuff during the day (are you going to not work on cloudy days??) that doesn't mean everything can. The nighttime storage needed is vast.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Of course the fuel rods are hotter than ore because the origional uranium ore is processed to eliminate other elements and concentrate the U-235 which is then embeded in carbon to make rods. Like smelting iron ore to get to the iron and eliminate the slag so the iron is useful. The process proposed to return the spent fuel rods to the mine was to grind up the rods and mix the bits with as much dirt, rock, etc. that it was originally seperated from. If it takes several tons of ore to get an ounce of U-235, then when the spent rod is ground and mixed with as much fill as was originally mined to get that ounce the result will not be as hot as it was when mined because some of the U-235 would have undergone fission and would no longer be uranium. Essentially the idea was to have the fill (containing the ground spent fuel rods) with the same or less concentration of radioactive material as was removed from the mine.

Even the yellow cake isn't that dangerous because it is mostly U-238 which isn't radioactive. The U-235 is seperated from the yellow cake through a lot more processing.

Your argument is reasonable for the unused fuel rods. It's *NOT* reasonable for the used ones.

Consider: Room A contains the fuel rods about to be loaded into a reactor. Room B contains the used ones just removed from the reactor. You have to go through one room, which do you choose?

(Choose wisely, you're unlikely to survive one of them.)