Rabbits are a native species in the Everglades.

Marsh rabbits

Just import some Guangdongren.

They'll clean out the snakes in no time.

I thought artificial particles on the scale of micrometers were bad for the environment. Now they want to produce them intentionally, and have them injected into houseplants? What happens to these particles when the plant dies? What if a pet or child eats the plants with these microplastics... I mean, nanoparticles in them?

I realize someone will want to point to how the plastics are somehow reacting with the body while these glowing nanoparticles are intentionally made to be "biocompatible" so as to not harm the plant. Well, if the microplastics are claimed to last in the environment for millions of years then just how reactive can they be? I'd be more concerned about the plastics if I knew they were breaking down in the body, but it sounds like they just kind of sit there like little bits of sand. Don't people realize that humans lived with "nanoparticles" since before humans were human? Doesn't sand and other little bits collect in the body too? What harm do those do? Apparently not much if we can intentionally inject them into plants to make them glow and not see any real harm to the plant.

I'm going on a rant here because of the hypocrisy. Either small little bits of inert materials do harm or they don't.

If this becomes a thing then I'd expect the next step to be injecting this stuff, or something like it, into pets. Then it's people injecting this into themselves. At some point there's going to have to be a realization that small little inert bits of material are bad or they aren't. My guess is they aren't because it seems clear to me that natural wear on rock, wood, and so much else produces little bits "the size of red blood cells" and they've been just blowing around in the wind for billions of years and humans have evolved to deal with that. If evolution didn't develop means to survive this then injecting plants with glowing bits that are only micrometers across should have some detrimental effects.

If I'm off my rocker here then maybe someone can point to where I went wrong.

Engineers Are Working on a Solar Microgrid to Outlast Lunar Nights
https://spectrum.ieee.org/nucl...

That appears to be the trend.

People must prioritize or they get nowhere. After 50 years of trying to replace both fossil fuels and nuclear fission with wind, water, and sun there's a point in which this continued failure to reach that replacement where priorities must shift. It appears two things are dawning on people with a concern on CO2 emissions and the global warming that comes with it. First is that while growth in energy production from renewable energy has been rapid it is not keeping up with growth in demand, meaning we are seeing fossil fuel use continue to grow to fill that gap. Second, the existing fleet of nuclear power plants that we relied upon for some semblance on constraining fossil fuel use is aging, and as they are shutdown and decommissioned the rate of growth in energy demand will only increase.

Which leads to the problem that if renewable energy sources can't keep up with energy demand now then what does that mean as capacity from nuclear power fades?

It means we must choose energy scarcity, increased use of fossil fuels, or more nuclear power. Where do our priorities lie?

I doubt anyone will tolerate energy scarcity, there would be people throwing off the government to dig for coal before they allow themselves and their children to freeze to death. Is nuclear power to be feared that we would rather see global warming than use nuclear power? How people developed such fear of nuclear power is almost baffling. It took a coordinated effort to get people to fear nuclear power, while at the same time was an effort to get people to fear global warming. One of them had to lose because, again, people are not going to just lie down while the lights and heat go out. People had to prioritize.

I'll have people claim that there's a fourth option, use some new technology. That's not a real option because until this new technology comes along we must still choose from energy scarcity, fossil fuels, or nuclear fission. We may have a new option in the future but until then we must choose from what exists now.

That's hardly a representative sample. The prevailing winds will come in from the coast. Half of the air pollution will be from cities on the California coast. The other half will be what comes from China and is blown over the sea. Perhaps I exaggerate on how much is from China, but not by much.

If you believe that then you haven't been paying attention.

So, if I find one example to prove you wrong then will you retract your statement that nobody ever suggested a solar only system as a power source for sustained human habitation on the moon?
Here you go: https://spectrum.ieee.org/moon...

With so much talk lately of NASA wanting to put a nuclear power plant on the moon its difficult to find the older studies where nuclear power was ruled out as an option. If you have a problem with my example abiove I can find more examples to prove you wrong.

Huh? I'm not sure I follow. I'll make a stab at a reasonable reply regardless...

What is forcing hydrocarbon fuels to be synthesized for powering vehicles is the 100x advantage, give or take, on energy density by mass and volume. Even after accounting for thermodynamic inefficiency with burning fuel for energy versus an electric motor and battery, and accounting for use of some new battery technology that is still a lab experiment than any kind of usable mass produced product, there's still going to be at least a 10x advantage on energy density. That's not a trivial matter that can be ignored. We can make accommodations for this in some "low hanging fruit" like commuter cars that travel on average 50 miles per day then spend the rest of the time sitting in the same spot for hours. That's far from a solution that can be applied universally.

What will "force nukes to be used" is a similar matter of energy density, though on very different scales as this is concerning stationary power plants than something that needs to fit in a parking spot, or even fit through the Panama Canal. Renewable energy takes up a lot of land, requires a lot of raw material for a given rated power output, with this getting worse if there's any need for energy storage to make up for how intermittent renewable energy sources are by their nature.

Do the math on how much mass and volume would be needed to power a long haul diesel truck, or a cargo vessel that crosses oceans. Then do the math on the size of power cables that would be needed to recharge the batteries for these vehicles in a reasonable amount of time. Then consider how much mining and refining would be needed to produce these wires, motors, batteries, and so forth. Or perhaps do some research on the web to find people that did this math before and shared it publicly. Then do the math on nuclear fission and synthesized hydrocarbon fuels. I'd like to see an explanation on how battery power recharged from only renewable energy is preferable.

I recognize this is a public forum where others can step in at any time to comment, so my intent is to not just answer the comment I'm replying to but to anticipate criticisms and answer those before someone tries to post a "gotcha" reply. I'm a bit tired of the same old bullshit replies on issues like this so I'll "nip it in the bud" as best I can so there's no opening for the same "gotcha" replies that have been outdated since the 1980s. I'm replying to all readers as best I can using quoted remarks as a jumping off point.

I can only guess what any individual is missing. A few general items that I see people fail to understand is the level of mining needed for wind and solar versus nuclear fission and fossil fuels. While installed solar power capacity can double each year there will be a point at which that kind of growth cannot be maintained. Then is the matter that solar panels have an operational lifespan of 20, maybe 30, years before they need replacement. That means we need to sustain that construction, and the mining, indefinitely just to keep from going backwards. Clearly nuclear fission has a similar problem but it's smaller by orders of magnitude. First is that a nuclear power plant can operate for 80+ years before it has accumulated enough wear that it needs to be torn down and start over. Then is the much smaller raw material requirements for the energy and power produced.

Any claims on our ability to avoid nuclear fission and fossil fuels, using only wind, water, and sun for energy make the same mistakes. They can show the numbers on how we can get to only wind, water and sun for power but they fail to show any comparison to a solution that includes nuclear power. That's because if they did then they'd lose. They can fail to account for sufficient storage, or some other important detail that should not be hand waved away. They can fail to show just how much manpower, water, or some other limited resource would be required, often claiming some future technology will make that issue go away. If we could predict the future to that detail then we'd never see a company go bankrupt again.

Most of these issues are just different ways to point to costs not accounted for. We can't just take the numbers we see today and extrapolate out, there will be second order effects that will cause costs to rise or fall and throw off so many assumptions. We can more easily extrapolate out on nuclear fission because so much of how a nuclear power plant is operated is shared with coal power, especially in the amount of land, water, materials, and labor needed, all of which are costs that can get out of hand if we see even as much as a doubling in the rate of consumption. With solar power especially there's not a doubling, we are looking at an order of magnitude or two difference.

I expect the PHEV to be something of the "default" option for replacing many vehicles on the road today, to the point that the ICEV as we know them become effectively obsolete.

Most commutes for Americans are under 50 miles round trip, or something like that. With so much driving inside that 50 miles per day we could reduce hydrocarbon consumption considerably with a PHEV as the predominate option. That also means not needing so much mining and manufacturing for batteries per vehicle, which would help plenty in keeping costs low compared to the "all or nothing" options of BEV or ICEV. I expect the BEV to become more popular but people losing some of their "range anxiety" and becoming more accepting of a BEV with a single charge range of 150 miles or so, that would also help with mining and manufacturing. This would be especially true with households that have more than one vehicle, the BEV would rarely be used for anything outside that daily 50 miles or whatever.

I don't know what article you refer to. There's so much room for interpretation that I'm not sure which numbers to trust. So much has changed in nuclear power that any numbers produced today aren't likely to be relevant should we return to building nuclear power at scale like we did in the 1970s. Then comes the costs that can be avoided with nuclear power having a means for cheap energy storage using thermal mass, and avoiding the need for "inertia" as nuclear power plants provide that already.

Not all renewable energy is equal. Rooftop solar has been repeatedly shown to be very expensive, also not that safe with so many installers getting injured and killed from falls and electrocutions. Offshore wind is also very expensive, with nearly every estimate showing it costs more than an equivalent amount of nuclear power. I saw a video recently where someone pointed out something like how physics always wins in energy production. There's real physical limits that will dictate costs, and using cost estimates like from LCOE studies we will likely seen the winners being hydro, geothermal, onshore wind, and nuclear fission. If there is a fifth place on energy production then it's not likely to be solar. Probably natural gas will take fifth place, and it will likely fade far below what we use now, to a point it's more of a local backup power like that seen for hospitals than something used to hold up a regional grid.

The cost overruns on nuclear power in the past is a matter of each plant being a unique design than something standardized like we'd see with natural gas or windmills. Then is the matter that we've not seen people build nuclear power plants at scale since the 1970s, so those that knew how to build them on time and under budget are now senile or dead. There's certainly been corruption to blame in many cases. Mismanagement is something that would likely work its way out with competition among builders and management experience gained with so little as one plant reaching completion.

When it comes to establishing costs there's plenty we can learn by simply making comparisons to highly similar coal power plants. The largest driver of the cost differential isn't some rare materials, or lack of unique tooling. The issue driving costs so high is the matter of permits, inspections, and other costs imposed by government. We can get those costs contained by simply having experienced people as builders and inspectors, standardized designs, and just general sanity in the process than treating each plant like something alien that's never been seen before and so needs a deep dive review that takes years, creates delays, and so drives up costs with no gain in safety or performance.

We won't get to carbon neutral energy without nuclear fission. Even then that's a kind of "white lie" because nothing can be truly carbon neutral but we will see the difference as so small that we let that lie to ourselves stand.

I don't know if anyone will read all that to the end. I'm mostly writing this as an exercise to work on building my case. I'm not likely adding anything that can't be found with a bit of research. I'm not coming up with anything exactly new. I believe the best path to the future should be clear to those that took research on this even half way as seriously as I have, and I'm not paid for this, I'm an amateur. The data is freely available so anything I claim should not be all that controversial.

Wow, that's long. I'm not taking the time to edit it down though.

Do or do not, there is no trite guideline that will make a difference.

If they are going to try, they may want to pick something easier first. Getting people to put down their crack pipes after two hours seems more achievable.

If they were going to use a blockchain to publish information used to derive statistics in a way that makes it impossible for the government to fudge the numbers then that might be worth something, but bullshit is bullshit whether it's printed on paper or engraved on stone tablets. If they want to impress me they'll at least need to explain how they're going to leverage AI to enable a cloud-based paradigm shift in wherever I was going with this sentence before my brain trigger an emergency shutoff to preserve my sanity.

There are also plenty of other aspects of the government that I'd rather see opened up before anything related to the economy. Everyone is participating in that and can make their own judgements as to how that's going regardless of what data (good or junk) the government is putting out. I want to know how much time is being wasted on trying to overthrow the government of country X or where the Pentagon is actually disappearing billions of dollars to far more than what our GDP is.

That's a good question that needs answers before I take up my limited "bandwidth" of things to worry about. There's only so much we can process, so we need to set priorities. Then is the matter of people that live a life of worrying about such little things because so much has been removed from our lives to worry about. I think of people with so much money, so many personal aids to deal with their schedules, bills, and so on that they get wrapped up about getting the "wrong kind" of bottled water or their restaurant order being the "wrong" temperature or color. That's where I believe a lot of this worry about plastics comes from, too many people with too little of real problems that they have to find something wrong with the world. It's like that bit out of The Matrix where the agent described how humans given a simulated world that was "too good to be true" that their brains melted down and they died. Our modern lives could be so free of harm and concern that we have to search out something to worry about. Well, without some evidence of real harm from micro-plastics I'll look elsewhere for something to worry about.

While I admire the thought you put into a resolution I'm of the belief that it could be resolved by much simpler means. Put a hard cap on immigrants given employment visas. If there's some job that no local will do then I guess that job will remain empty until they find a way to train a local to fill that job.

It appears Canada has an immigration problem that is at least on parity with the USA, likely worse. If the government is wiling to allow abuse of immigration law to artificially lower wages, and as a side effect leave locals unemployed or underemployed, then they deserve the inevitable economic repercussions.

The hiring of immigrants may be a kind of short term solution for some economic problem but that will come with long term problems later.

I don't know what you, or people like you, want from me. If I mention nuclear power then I'm called a "shill". If I leave nuclear power out then I'm lying by omission or something.

Clearly there's a large number of people that believe they have all the answers to solving the world's energy problems, including myself. There's a long story I could tell that got me where I am on this. One way to summarize this is I've been fascinated with electricity to the point I intended to study power electronics at university, since that's the technology that would allow for the big inverters for wind, solar, battery storage, and HVDC power lines. Because of another long story that didn't happen so I took as many related classes I could. In that education, and my own reading to learn more beyond my time at university, I discovered just how impossible it is to remove fossil fuels from our lives without extracting energy from nuclear fission.

I'm kind of beyond advocacy now. I'm seeing that there's sanity returning to the energy industry so now I'm more in the mood of "I told you so" when the topic comes up. It's not exactly a mature position to take, I know that, but when dealing with people that drank the solar+storage kool-aid there's not much else to do but point to how their own advocacy is falling apart because it has collided with reality and become a burning wreck.

So, again, I don't know what you want from me. I found the question on asking what we'd do if we assume nuclear power isn't an option as an odd question to ask. If you are aware of my position as you claim then you must also be aware that that I've repeatedly pointed out the three options we have for energy in the future. We can choose to continue to burn fossil fuels and face the consequences of that. We can include nuclear fission as an option to avoid fossil fuels and enjoy the abundance of energy that offers. We can restrict ourselves to renewable energy and face energy scarcity to the point our economy reverts to something of a mix of pre-industrial and high tech, which would include reverting to slavery, beasts of burden, and all the human misery that comes with that.

If we are to see our condition improve then we will need technologies like nuclear powered ships beyond just a few aircraft carriers, submarines, and a few other military/government ships here and there. We will also need to develop synthesized hydrocarbon fuels to keep aircraft flying, long haul trucks moving, and so many other vehicles too small for a nuclear reactor. That's the future I see coming, and I'm seeing more evidence of it every day. Fight me if you like on that but I'll just point to news reports demonstrating that reality.

How long has it been since Elon Musk promised the Tesla Semi? I'm beginning to think that is another idea that had collided with reality. Musk isn't talking about solar power like he used to, and he's on board with putting a nuclear power plant on the moon. Here's a few samples of news on how one of the biggest advocates for solar+storage had reality slap some sense into him:
https://rubryka.com/en/2022/08...
https://futurism.com/the-byte/...
https://www.slashgear.com/1944...
https://greekreporter.com/2021...

I know that's a long post but it appears I need to make long posts or be accused of lying by omission or having words put in my mouth for not spelling out every detail. I have to stop somewhere though. In spite of this I still expect criticism for some omission, as well as criticism for my attempt at clarity.

Why would anyone assume nuclear energy is off the table when for the first time since the 1970s there's dozens of nuclear power plants under construction at the same time? If we are to assume that nuclear power is off the table then we can assume that we'd see either growth in use of fossil fuels like we've never seen before in history, or we'd see levels of poverty, disease, and starvation like we've never seen before. We've been "coasting" on nuclear power plants built in the 1970s to hold up a good sized portion of the global economy. There's been something of a panic on electricity production lately when nuclear power plants announce closure, with many cases of emergency loans to stay open, refurbishments and license renewals to keep existing plants open for a more than 80 years after construction, recently shuttered plants also getting refurbishments and license renewals to reopen, and again more new construction on nuclear power not seen since the 1970s.

Without nuclear power we will continue to "coast", with the rate of slowing in economic output only getting worse with each nuclear power plant closed. We can't go back to an economy powered by wind, water, and sun without also a return to the poverty, disease, and starvation seen when humanity last relied on those energy sources. It would be far worse because of the much larger human population.

If we see carbon sequestration from abandoning nuclear power then it will be from burying the dead.

The questions you asked are equally nonsensical. I don't know what abandoning nuclear power has to do with this story, but if you want to go there then there's nothing good to come from it. We have an economy that leans on nuclear power too much to be rid of it. We will need nuclear power until something better comes along, and that's going to take more than 20 years to develop and deploy. Given estimates I've seen on raw materials needed for replacing hydrocarbon burning vehicles with battery-electric there's not likely to make that happen in anything less than 30 years, barring some WW2 level event where there's some equivalent of a global total war. With that the "success" could be from seeing population decline by the billions.

I know, but some people can't be happy about much of anything.

It's already started, you might just have to scroll down a bit or reload the webpage.

I haven't seen that yet. Maybe I just need to reload the page.