Eliminating "the need" for overhead wires seems like a terrible trade off when you're adding "the need" for expensive batteries and charging infrastructure.
Charging is just a point. Cables must be over entire track system. And if you at any point in time decide that cables are more economical you can always put them over any part of the track where you think it makes economic sense and use them to charge. If we had lithium batteries first there's be scarcely any overhead cables anywhere.
Heck, in US they don't even bother with cables or batteries, just put a diesel generator and a tank on electric trains for decades now.
But if you still believe I'm very wrong, please do elaborate.
You might be interesting in looking at the Lima programming language: http://btetrud.com/Lima/Lima-Documentation.html . It has ideas that cover some of these things. For example, it's intended to operate with fully automatic optimization. This assumption allows shedding lots of complexity that arises from needing to do the same logical thing in multiple ways that differ in their physical efficiency characteristics. Like instead of having 1000 different tree classes, you have 1 and optimisers can then look at your code and decide what available tree structures make most sense in each place. Related to your async functions idea, it does provide some convenient ways of handling these things. While functions are just normal functions, it has a very easy way to make a block of async (using "thread") and provides means of capturing async errors that result from that.
Solar doesn't. Wind doesn't. Hydro does (usually). You know he was talking about solar and wind. Why are you being a turd? Hydro is tapped, we can't build significantly more hydro in this world.
I got so tired of dealing with Google's AMP so I switched to Firefox just on mobile. It's fine, tho the url bar doesn't work as well as on chrome. Other than that I've gotten used to it well enough. I'm starting to hate everything Google does. All their products are steadily getting worse and worse as they get more bloated. I'll consider switching to Firefox on desktop.
The French government, through the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives, played a key role in standardization of civilian nuclear plants and, to my knowledge, the United States had no true parallel and instead relied on private companies to figure that amongst themselves. We all know how that tends to turn out.
I actually thought nothing and was curious enough to ask for clarity, as clearly demonstrated. But if you're the type to read into the question what you want just so you can call me an "idiot", that makes you a pretty special type of asshole there buddy.
Your question was full of self righteous snark and your response to my question was as well. Trying to tell me you were just "curious" and "asking for clarity" is 100% bullshit and you know it. If you want to actually engage in a conversation, drop the snark and I'll be happy to have a pleasant conversation with you. Otherwise, I guess we'll both have to be assholes.
I still don't see you making any constructive comment. If you're going to, make it your next one please. If you want an answer to your original rhetorical-looking question. The answer is no.
Solar and wind are now much cheaper than alternatives, even without subsidies. E.g. it is cheaper to build a new solar farm and switch over to it than to continue using an existing coal plant.
The only reason massive subsidies for renewables continue is to accelerate build-out to address the looming climate catastrophe. We need to ramp up to building out a TW of new renewable capacity every year.
In France this is false: nuclear always obtained heavily (albeit indirectly) subsidies: the R&D was public, it was built by a public monopoly using public money and money borrowed thanks to the state vouching for it...
No one was talking about France. angiosperm snarkily implied that Nuclear only works if its subsidized. He's clearly wrong. The fact that France does subsidize it isn't relevant. Nuclear in the US is not subsidized and yet is massively more cost effective than fossil fuel power plants.
The civilian nuclear industry stemmed from massive military investments, which were a way to subsidize it. "In the United States, the federal government has paid US$145 billion for energy subsidies to support R&D for nuclear power ($85 billion) and fossil fuels ($60 billion) from 1950 to 2016" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies_in_the_United...)
Cost effectiveness will be established after the last hot waste of the last decommissioned plant will be cold. In the meantime any serious accident or waste particle wandering around may induce costs.
Was the basic research funded by governments? Yes. Is subsidization necessary or even done for nuclear powerplants to be built and profitably run given that basic research as an already-existing stepping stone? No.
Thanks for the info. I did some more research and found out that Nuclear Power was indeed not subsidized from 1985 to 2000, but after 2000 some nuclear subsidies seem to have been created. However, while over 20% of the electricity in the US is produced by nuclear plants, only 1% of energy subsidies goes to nuclear, which looks like is approximately on par with subsidies for fossil fuel power.
I don't think we should be subsidizing power (or most things) but it seems disingenuous for an article to claim that nuclear power isn't viable because it gets subsidies, even tho fossil fuel gets at least as much subsidies per mwh as nuclear.
Nuclear power is not viable for a reason other than than it depends on subsidies. It is not viable because it costs overwhelmingly more both to build and to operate than the competition, with or without considering subsidies on either side, and has always produced exactly zero watts for many years after a project started.
Coal and oil still get huge subsidies, yet even with are not viable against solar and wind without.
I'd be very surprised if you could convince me that solar or wind could eliminate the need for the majority of our electricity to be generated by base-load systems like hydro, coal, oil, or nuclear. Do you know what the cost of solar power is if you factor in storage needs?
Nationalized industries are great for like 5-10 years, after which it becomes clear they have no ability to make effective plans or react to a changing market.
The Goverment power company here (bc Canada) is one of the best run in the world, with some of the cheapest rates (10c cad) and has been a public utility for over 60 years despite a previous conservative Goverment saddling it with 16 billion of extra costs due to grift
Norway also does great with its nationalized O&G
Nationalize industries can be fantastic with the public benefiting directly rather then a few select individuals.
Fix your public institutions instead of privatization
Pointing to the best run government power company says nothing about the average government run power company. And I don't know why you think cheap rates for a government power company are particularly special. The rates are subsidized by your taxes. What's the real cost? I bet its hard to even find out.
> a previous conservative Goverment saddling it with 16 billion of extra costs due to grift
Oh really? A government run monopoly being involved in grift? How surprising. Guess what? That's what happens with government run companies. You can't simply wish away the opposing party. And I bet the party you like best also does awful crap you conveniently ignore.
For every great nationalized business you can point out, I could point out 100 that are awful wastes of money.
lol no. BC Hydro is profitable and is not subsidized by taxes, usually turning a profit for the province. it did this for decades until the previous government decided to privatize power production and surprise surprise that saddled the crown corp with a ton of extra costs where if it had built out the capacity itself and not funnelled money to private companies who were doners.
in canada every province with private electricity company is being reamed with high energy prices. every province with a government run power company is not. the same seems to apply in the EU/UK.
nationalized companies run from amazing too crap but every time infrastructure or natural monopolies is privatized the consumer/citizen looses out. EVERY TIME. from parking in Chicago to PG&E in cali to the 409 in ontario - privatization never works out and to prevent abuse regulation is always imposed.
turns out when you grant a for profit company a monoply they take advantage. every time without fail.
so we have on one hand nationalized companies ranging from bad to great for society to private companies always being bad doing everything possible to extract money.
Turns out somethings will always be a monopoly - you eont get to have multiple roads or power lines to your home. Somethings are natural monopolies and turns out in those cases it’s better to have a Goverment provider a service with the objective or serving community/people then a company who’s only goal is maximizing profit.
Also turns out that competition doesn’t always lead to the best outcomes for a society see healthcare in America vs the rest of the world or that we are speed running the world into a climate disaster
No it doesn't "turn out" that way. It is a self fullfilling prophesy where a government either grants a monopoly to a private company or to itself. There is almost nothing that would actually be a monopoly without government protection.
> you eont get to have multiple roads or power lines to your home
Why the fuck not? You are asserting things that you clearly haven't thought much about. But I don't have time to try and change your mind. Your biases are clearly too ingrained.
It’s funny you talking about “bias” when you simply refuse to acknowledge natural monopolies which are a real thing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly and just presume they have to be “granted by the Goverment”
“The cost of new nuclear is prohibitive for us to be investing in,” says Crane. Exelon considered building two new reactors in Texas in 2005, he says, when gas prices were $8/MMBtu and were projected to rise to $13/MMBtu. At that price, the project would have been viable with a CO2 tax of $25 per ton. “We’re sitting here trading 2019 gas at $2.90 per MMBtu,” he says; for new nuclear power to be competitive at that price, a CO2 tax “would be $300–$400.” Exelon currently is placing its bets instead on advances in energy storage and carbon sequestration technologies.
I'm not sure why you think that Exelon didn't consider regulatory risk as one of the things that made it not make sense for them. It was certainly a large factor.
The idea that existing nuclear power plants are losing money because they aren't operationally competitive with oil and gas does not square with the facts. The total cost of running a nuclear plant is 30% less than oil and gas per kilowatt-hour. And if all our nuclear plants weren't 50 years old and saddled with massive overregulation, the operation and maintenance of a nuclear plant would probably be equivalent to running a fossil fueled power plant, which would cut ANOTHER 30% off the cost of nuclear because fuel costs of fossil fueled power plants are 4 times the cost of nuclear fuel per kwh.
And as for construction costs, you can see that the massive increase in construction costs in the early 60s and 70s was because regulation required enormous increases in staffing, which ballooned labor costs.
And even so a nuclear plant should be expected to be profitable as long as you can manage to operate it for long enough without the government shutting you down (one of the major regulatory risks I mentioned).
Nuclear power plants in the past generally took 7 years to build and pay off in 16-24 years. While a natural gas plant can be built in 2 years and pay off in 8 years. Nuclear power plants are so cost effective tho, that if you can manage to run it for 17 years, you'll make more money than running a natural gas plant.
> I'm not sure why you think that Exelon didn't consider regulatory risk as one of the things that made it not make sense for them. It was certainly a large factor.
Who cares? That putative issue would be beating a dead horse. If it didn't make sense economically anyway, why worry about that?
> The idea that existing nuclear power plants are losing money because they aren't operationally competitive with oil and gas does not square with the facts.
Oil isn't in the picture (it's not used for any baseload power generation in the US, and precious little peaking). But gas is certainly an issue. There have been existing plants (not all of them, of course) that shut down because they could not make even an operating profit. TMI's other reactor was cash flow negative for six years before it was shut down, for example.
In any environment where existing plants are troubled, building new NPPs is obviously completely off the table economically. V. C. Summer was so out of the running it was better to write off the $9B spent so far on it than to complete it.
I'm ignoring your fantasizing, your wishful woulda-coulda-shoulda, and instead paying attention to what things actually cost. So, yes, the conversation is over.
I see you've been massively down voted, even tho none of them can manage to even disagree with your facts. Regardless, I don't think greening offsets the millions that die from air pollution every year, not including any climate change effects.
I once saw a paper arguing that one of the deleterious effects of climate change over the next hundred years was the proliferation of poison ivy. They found that greening was occurring because of increased CO2 and temperature increase, and plucked out 'oh no, there'll be more poison ivy' as their topic.
I wouldn't disagree with the high mortality from pollution toxins. I've never looked closely, but also seems common sense.
As for how much greening benefits offset costs, I was mildly frustrated by the downvoting :) and went researching on the economic effects in particular. The only study I can find on CO₂ fertilization is recent and stunning:
"we apply the CO₂ fertilization effect... backwards to 1940, and, assuming no other limiting factors, find that CO₂ was the dominant driver of [American agriculture] yield growth"
As they note, the extrapolation is from a study period of 2014-2020, but it's expected they have underestimated the prior role of CO₂ fertilization, as CO₂ response becomes saturated as levels rise and that's not represented in their model.
This is 2021 research funded by DOE & USDA, run by NBER, with PIs from Harvard and Columbia who are well cited within their field of environmental economics. Given the pedigree and that conclusion, this should be front-page news in science mags at least. I couldn't find any reporting on it except for Epoch Times (https://www.theepochtimes.com/science/nasa-satellite-data-su...), which gets an eye-roll from me, but guess they got this one :)
I read the full thing. It's great. Crosses high-resolution satellite CO₂ anomaly observations (NASA OCO-2) with crop yield records, wind modeling, sensitivity testing on non-ag land and the result is broadly repeated: +1ppm CO₂ -> +~0.5-1% yield. CO₂ levels went from ~310-410ppm in that period.
If true, it seems at odds with the normal account that gave nitrogen fertilization the lead role for increasing crop yields this past century and lifting most of the world's population out of regular food insecurity, and the growth of our population into billions. Seems more likely both were necessary.
It also makes sense, as C3 plants (e.g. soy, wheat and most plants besides hot/dry grasses) respond positively to CO₂ partial-pressures up to 800-1000ppm. C4 low-CO₂ adapted corn also fertilizes, just to a lesser extent. The authors also note the negative effects of heat stress, but this wouldn't have been as significant in the extrapolation period.
From Epoch Times: “The paper’s first author, Taylor, said: 'We reiterate that climate change will have a large negative impact on agriculture in aggregate, especially in places exposed to extreme heat. And higher CO2 may even lower food nutrition. But the countervailing fertilization effect should also be taken into account.'”
