World is still fucked

[mothman]

That's kind of the problem in the US with rolling blackouts too. The fires and need for blackouts were due to poorly maintained electrical infrastructure. Sure, man and climate change cause the conditions but the lack of maintenance exacerbate it massively.

I read a fascinating article about metal fatigue in older, unmaintained electricity pylons in the US and how they caused these devastating forest fires. Essentially they were rusty metal rings used to suspend the cables; the motion of wind etc. caused the rings to saw back and forth, eventually slicing trough the 'hooks' they were hanging on.  The cables would then fall, short-circuit, sparks, fire, thousands of acres devastated, millions in property damage, dozens dead - all because successive administrations weren't interested in paying for proper infrastructure maintenance and replacement.

[Kankurette]

i just don't think it's worth the risk, can't we find something less dangerous? i've read enough about fukushima and chernobyl to be horrified by the whole thing. besides the construction of new generation nuclear plants (in Finland and France) is a pure environmental and economical disaster. surely there are better ways to spend all this money. and i don't think all those very old plants are going to fare well in the middle of relentless natural catastrophes

I don't like it either, but what are the alternatives? Are we capable of using hydroelectricity or solar power as a main power source?

[Zetetic]

"We will have phased out nuclear energy by 2022. We have a very difficult problem, namely that almost the only sources of energy that will be able to provide baseload power are coal and lignite. Naturally, we cannot do without baseload energy. Natural gas will therefore play a greater role for another few decades. I believe we would be well advised to admit that if we phase out coal and nuclear energy then we have to be honest and tell people that we'll need more natural gas."

[Shit Good Nose]

I don't like it either, but what are the alternatives? Are we capable of using hydroelectricity or solar power as a main power source?

Hydro is perfect for a constant reliable baseload, but see my post earlier in the thread for problems.  Solar arrays for both power and hot water would get close to being a main power source, BUT they would need to be on every building in the country and have battery storage capability.  Many problems with that - large investment required from everyone, including home owners, and a LOT of work done on the distribution networks (many of which are so near to capacity and finely balanced a metaphorical extra kettle being switched on at the wrong time will make the whole lot go POP).

As it is, many domestic suppliers and some small business suppliers ONLY offer 100% renewable as an option now, with a couple of them ONLY offering 100% green.  So if you live in a house which is electricity only (no gas) and your supplier is Octopus or Ovo, then you're likely supplied with guaranteed 100% green electricity (verifiable by ROCS) and your carbon emissions from power are actually negligible.

[Sebastian Cobb]

The greenest way is to bypass your meter, then the electricity comes from nowhere on paper. It's a neat little accounting trick, much like 100% green energy.

[Kankurette]

And gas means fracking. Which nobody wants. Except the Tories.

My house is old, and I have a gas cooker, so not 100% green yet, unfortunately.

[chveik]

"We will have phased out nuclear energy by 2022. We have a very difficult problem, namely that almost the only sources of energy that will be able to provide baseload power are coal and lignite. Naturally, we cannot do without baseload energy. Natural gas will therefore play a greater role for another few decades. I believe we would be well advised to admit that if we phase out coal and nuclear energy then we have to be honest and tell people that we'll need more natural gas."

can you be more esoteric please?

[Shit Good Nose]

It's a neat little accounting trick, much like 100% green energy.

If it's backed up by ROCS, it's fully traceable.  I think as of last year or 2019 it legally can't be called 100% renewable or green unless ROCS are in place.

[Shit Good Nose]

"We will have phased out nuclear energy by 2022. We have a very difficult problem, namely that almost the only sources of energy that will be able to provide baseload power are coal and lignite. Naturally, we cannot do without baseload energy. Natural gas will therefore play a greater role for another few decades. I believe we would be well advised to admit that if we phase out coal and nuclear energy then we have to be honest and tell people that we'll need more natural gas."

Best start buddying up to Putin then.

[Zetetic]

If it's backed up by ROCS, it's fully traceable.  I think as of last year or 2019 it legally can't be called 100% renewable or green unless ROCS are in place.

I don't think the issue is with traceability, but that moving domestic and SME demand to "100% renewable" doesn't do much if there's still sufficient demand for energy from non-renewables.

(Indeed, if there weren't other pressures, it'd presumably tend to make non-renewable energy cheaper?)

[BlodwynPig]

Just watched this great short film from DoubleDown on Why Jeff Bezos' Space Dream is Humanity's Nightmare.

Ah, just pm'd you that.

[Zetetic]

can you be more esoteric please?

The quotation is from Merkel in 2019. Whether the inevitability she described is true or not is, a bit, irrelevant, I guess - we have an example of a Western European nation turning away from nuclear in favour of renewables and ending up with a fair bit of fossil fuels and dubious biomass.

Best start buddying up to Putin then.

Mmm.



I want to respond to chveik along the lines of "That's just nuclear power under a shitty government and economic system, not the kind of nuclear power I mean" but even I can see that's not terrible helpful or convincing. Still, on balance, think it's the best thing to push for here-and-now.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I don't think the issue is with traceability, but that moving domestic and SME demand to "100% renewable" doesn't do much if there's still sufficient demand for energy from non-renewables.

(Indeed, if there weren't other pressures, it'd presumably tend to make non-renewable energy cheaper?)

Or if there's lots of demand or not enough actual supply (I'll leave it to you to decide here whether you want 'supply' to mean 'at this minute' or 'over the course of a day to make the book balance').

[Shit Good Nose]

I don't think the issue is with traceability, but that moving domestic and SME demand to "100% renewable" doesn't do much if there's still sufficient demand in the non-renewable sector.

(Indeed, if there weren't other pressures, it'd presumably tend to make non-renewable energy cheaper?)

It's making it's way - slowly - into large business.  An awful lot of local authorities with a large estate have procured at least 100% renewable contracts in the last couple of years.  My LA (Bath & North East Somerset) went 100% green this year, and that's something like a £4million contract including 50-60% of schools in the region.  Granted, industry will have just one or two sites that will do the same in a year and they'll still be using "brown" energy, but even so it's a huge step from where we were just three years ago.

As for price - the price of actual energy has plateaud as the renewable pool has got larger, but because of problems with the infrastructure and decades of little to no investment, non-energy costs continue to rise massively.  Ten years ago the cost of a unit of electricity or gas was roughly 75% commodity and 25% non-commodity.  It's now 50-60% commodity and 40-50% non-commodity.  In another few years it's likely to be 25-75, with industry long-term projections being 10-90.  "Brown" energy prices have indeed slowed, but you still have the same problem with the non-energy costs so it will continue to go up at roughly the same rate.  But the premium for renewable/green is a LOT less than it was - time was not so long ago you could easily add 20-25% just for having renewable/green, but that's come right down in the last few years to as little as less than 1%.

[chveik]

The quotation is from Merkel in 2019. Whether the inevitability she described is true or not is, a bit, irrelevant, I guess - we have an example of a Western European nation turning away from nuclear in favour of renewables and ending up with a fair bit of fossil fuels and dubious biomass.

oh thanks i didn't realize you were quoting someone. i'm guessing Japan is taking the same road, which obviously isn't ideal at all.

I want to respond to chveik along the lines of "That's just nuclear power under a shitty government and economic system, not the kind of nuclear power I mean" but even I can see that's not terrible helpful or convincing. Still, on balance, think it's the best thing to push for here-and-now.

yeah i get it now. i admit i'm not completely objective on that subject.

[Sebastian Cobb]

One of the interesting things about Fukushima is that they largely only failed due to inadequate flood defences around multiple backup sources for cooling. The problem here were bureaucrats leaning on the engineers to cut cost.

There was a plant of similar design that got hit worse by the tsunami but was fine because the guy in charge just built bigger defenses anyway.

Although modern plants don't need external power for cooling when scrammed I don't think.

[Buelligan]

I think it's pretty capitalist/anti-socialist to slavishly obey the idea that ever increasing consumption is a thing that should be, not simply catered-for but built into the centre of our plans, encouraged, even.

The idea that something as entirely toxic as nuclear power generation would even get a look in[nb]the cost, the pollution, the risk, the ongoing pollution and risk and the massive fucking cost in every sense of the word "cost"[/nb] if it weren't for its other uses and the mantra that we must have what we want regardless of consequence, even if we don't know the cost, can't afford it anyway or even want it.  Absolutely batshit fucking insane and deeply anti-social.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Well the biggest drive of domestic consumption is heating rather than some sort of ill due to capitalist conditioning. And getting rid of coal/gas involves moving to electric generation.

Brown coal is traditionally quite socialist though.

[Shit Good Nose]

Brown coal is traditionally quite socialist though.

And very racist

[Buelligan]

Well the biggest drive of domestic consumption is heating rather than some sort of ill due to capitalist conditioning. And getting rid of coal/gas involves moving to electric generation.

Brown coal is traditionally quite socialist though.

There are other ways to boil a frog, as we all know.  Would I, for instance, prefer to be provided with cheap solar panels or decent insulation, by the government or would I like to fund a nuclear reactor in the next field?

[Kankurette]

Increasing consumption isn't viable in the long run either. Something has to give.

[BlodwynPig]

Well the biggest drive of domestic consumption is heating rather than some sort of ill due to capitalist conditioning. And getting rid of coal/gas involves moving to electric generation.

Brown coal is traditionally quite socialist though.

Brown coal? You mean sewage? There is plenty value in anaerobic digestion, but only as part of integrated and diverse energy production portfolios

[The Mollusk]

Piss in the sea when you consider the plans to move cars and heating off fossil fuels and on to electric

I will, thanks for the advice!

[Buelligan]

Just wanted to add something more on this - people talk about the cleanness of nuclear (coal and wood burning was mentioned elsewhere in this thread, coal burning being held up as less dirty than wood).  So consider, how much money, planning, work and science goes into making nuclear "clean". 

When we say "clean" do we ignore what happens when those systems fail?  Do we take into consideration the dirty deadly tail of poison that is (in human terms) an undying legacy of production, its storage, forever?  No, we do not.  We are taught to look, only and entirely, at the optimum outcome, disregard the inescapable costs, forget the growing mountains of purest poison we are sending the future.  What kind of "clean" is that?  I work as a cleaner.  If I took all the shit I have to deal with and hid it somewhere in a box on the client's premises, they would not consider my job done, I can promise you that.  This is infinitely infinitely more serious.

Ask yourself, if we put the work we lavish on supporting nuclear into making coal or wood or rubbing shit on our dinner plates "clean", what would be the improvement in a "clean" outcome for those endeavours? 

[derek stitt]

Brown coal? You mean sewage? There is plenty value in anaerobic digestion, but only as part of integrated and diverse energy production portfolios

Brown coal is lignite the most highly polluting, least efficient  form of coal, famous for its support of labour and power supply in the old Soviet Bloc, East Germany in particular.

[Chedney Honks]

This grief wank thread always makes me think of a banger off the Kompakt 4 compilation.

Schaeben & Voss - The World Is Crazy

https://youtu.be/uq6snjkidmw

I remember having a very lengthy drunken debate with some Dutch guy in China who thought it went 'dur dur durr the world is crazy' and I insisted it was 'got ya now, the world is crazy'. We didn't fall out at all or get angry, we were laughing our heads off because it says it about five hundred times again and again and it was so obvious to both of us what it said and every few seconds we'd hold our hands up to suggest a moment of silence and we'd pause with our eyes wide open saying 'Listen...just listen...now! Get it?!' and we'd both immediately maintain our exact position and be laughing at the other incredulously.

I realised the next day that it obviously says 'don't you know the world is crazy?'

Cheers for the memories, mate.

[Dr Trouser]

It doesn't matter one iota how we generate, the main issue is demand-side response. If we push on to electric cars, bitcoin mining, data centres, aircon etc. at the rate we're going we're never going to generate enough energy (even through SMRs).

Stop using electricity or we're all fucked.

[Buelligan]

Absolutely this ^.

[GMTV]

It doesn't matter one iota how we generate, the main issue is demand-side response. If we push on to electric cars, bitcoin mining, data centres, aircon etc. at the rate we're going we're never going to generate enough energy (even through SMRs).

Stop using electricity or we're all fucked.

We're all fucked anyway even if we somehow did manage to sort out a magical non detrimental energy source. We're fucking things up in so many other ways, and at an ever increasing rate. Plus there's the question of how long it would take to actually get all the new source(s) setup, easily decades, during which time we'd still need fossil fuels and we'll hit the 2040 Definitely Fucked point regardless.

The article reflected on an old theoretical model and said aye, looks like we've more or less hit all the data points on the graphs. We're continuing on the trends, they're accelerating, and presumably we'll hit that cataclysmic pinch point in a few decades or so.

[Buelligan]

It's like any problem, addiction, illness, it may be fatal, it may not.  No one knows until they know, what we can be pretty sure of is, if we do nothing except increase the behaviour that set this all off, it's likely that the outcome will be on the very fucking shit side of things.  So it's our choice, destroy ourselves because we're incapable of controlling our own impulses or try not to do that.  Up to us.