Submission + - CSI:Cyber leaked early to torrent sites. 2
PS: Ars is reporting it too.
> This heat warms the atmosphere
No it doesn't. Waste heat rapidly radiates into space. Temperatures only rise if you interrupt the radiation, say though GHG's that trap it.
> The more wind energy we use the stronger the winds
Premise incorrect, conclusion non-factual by default.
> I've seen plenty of markets that seemed mature, but the fact those were stagnated due to lack of interest in innovating
Or investment. PV is a clear example of this - panels are selling today below the cost that was predicted only a few years ago to be the lowest possible cost of product. The mad rush of money into the market raised production so much that supply/demand pressed all the input costs way down, while the manufacturers were slitting each other's throats squeezing costs out of their lines. I can't recall anything like it, a 5x decrease in price in under 5 years.
> Who exactly are "clean power foes"?
Well, Americans For Prosperity for one. More generally, anyone with a coal plant that doesn't have easy access to natgas.
> All wind is subsidized. Can't compete with natural gas electricity.
Unsubsidized (onshore) wind is less expensive than natural gas:
http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Levelized%20Cost%20of%20Energy%20-%20Version%208.0.pdf
Look on page 2.
> First priority for electricity is big hidro / biomass from biodigestors+other natural wastes.
> Then nuclear.
> Then rooftop solar PV.
> Then wind.
[snip]
> it will take 20 years just to license the first MSR reactor
So, is your argument that we should do nothing for 20 years? No, I know, I'm being silly. But the point in there is valid: nuclear is too slow to fix the problem.
> US NRC and their NATO counterparts are working really hard in making nuclear as expensive as they can
This tired old bromide. *sigh*
Regulatory load, the favourite bugaboo of nuclear supporters, accounts for 5 to 10% of system cost. It has no real effect, as one can see by the fact that regulatory load has fallen from as much as 20% to 5% over the last 30 years yet the number of reactor projects plummeted.
The actual problem, as it has been well known for decades, is size. Economic efficiency scales with reactor and plant size, which means the sweet spot is somewhere around 900 to 1100 MW per reactor, and 2 to 4 reactors per plant. This means that building costs alone push the price into the $30 billion range. And when you turn on such a system, supply and demand drops your spot price and your profit margins. Everyone's known this for decades, which is why there were efforts like CANDU6 and SMRs, but none of these exactly took the world by storm because their economic performance sucked.
This year the average price for new nuclear is $7.50/W and wind is $1.25/W. The cost of integrating wind is actually lower than nuclear, contrary to other bromides. Even scaling for CF, wind is at least 1/2 the price of nuclear on a kWh basis. That is everything you need to know about the state of the nuclear industry right there.
> That's fairly trivial to handle
It's fairly trivial to handle, period. And this is a statement of fact, one based on the fact that 5% of all power in the US is generated by wind, yet grid performance continues to improve.
You see, the grid operators have this magical stuff called "software" that allows them to predict the output of all of the generation assets with extremely high accuracy faster than the actual changes take place.
This "software" thus allows them to switch from one power source to another faster than the rise and fall in production. And this "software" doesn't just work for wind, but any source at all.
You might want to look up this "software" thing, I hear it's going to be big.
> I don't get why people who have no clue always write nonsense like this.
Because an ad campaign funded by the Koch brothers told them that if they don't believe this they're liberals.
Like this one: https://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2014/04/30/wont-anyone-think-of-the-seniors/
Apparently, being associated with "the kids today" is far more scary for old people than anything pollution or GHG might do.
Variables don't; constants aren't.