Delicious LiveJournal Links for 8-16-2010

[andrewducker]

• My application for a job as a Homeopath - hilarious, yet terrifying
  (tags: homeopathy science wtf)
• Coal-fired power stations win reprieve after Conservatives and Lib-Dems abandon opposition policy
  (tags: climate uk environment coalition politics)
• Fallen Princesses
  (tags: disney photos photography satire society fairytale)

Comments

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Hmm, they must have determined that the political fallout from coal fired powerstations is less than the political fallout of green-lighting a large number of new nuclear power stations.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Am just writing to my MP to whinge about this.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

I can't honestly make my mind up about this issue myself, on the one hand... nuclear power is scary. But... it's also a very green non-polluting form of power generation.

The trade off is between having to store the nuclear waste safely, and, not releasing any greenhouse gasses at all.

I suspect in order to meet our future energy requirements, we might just be forced into having to accept a dozen new nuclear power stations. So better to do it now, rather than creating yet more coal stations and further ruining the environment.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

My view is that we need one last generation of nuclear power to give us the time to get renewables developed and installed.

Nuclear being scary is not a good argument when climate change is so much scarier.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

I think I probably agree with you. The theoretical harm of a nuclear accident is outweighed by the very real, very pressing, and very urgent catastrophic harm of global warming.

Plus, one major nuclear accident, given how many nuclear power stations are in operation, is a pretty good track record for safety.

And yeah, we need ~something~ to plug the gap. Renewables aren't going to do it in the forseeable future. Wind power is snake oil medicine. So it is either nuclear, or hydrocarbons.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Wind power isn't snake oil, but you need a lot of space - offshore would be good but it's not a very mature technology. Concentrating solar power looks good for warmer bits of the world (and every building should have solar water heating, cos there's no point wasting precious electricity on something you can get free) Tidal barrages are proven technology but drastic to install like nothing else.

Wave power probably *is* currently snake oil, but a sensible level of funding for a decade or two and it might be something to add to the mix. Come to that, if we'd put the money we spent on the Iraq war into energy technologies, even nuclear fusion might begin to look feasible.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

I thought wind power was still only profitable because of the sizeable government subsidies available for it, and that the cost of turbine manufacture/installation outweighed the gain?

Or has that changed recently?

Lord knows the turbines I see around here are always sitting stationary because there isn't enough wind to turn them.

Wave power could be the solution (at least for the UK with our miles of coastline) if they can crack the technology. Which, I'm pretty confident they will.

And gosh, yes. The money we spent on Iraq and Afghanistan. I've yet seen a clear honest report on how much that is actually costing the country, the government keep verrrrrry quiet about the true costs of the war.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I'm going by the figures in http://www.withouthotair.com/ which everyone should read (in book form or free online). He deals with energy efficiency rather than economics, which he specifically excludes.

My take (I'm not an economist either) is that a) we *need* clean energy, and if per-unit prices need to rise to make it profitable, so be it, b) as demand rises turbine cost may well fall, and c) energy infrastructure is a sensible thing for government to fund, just like they fund transport infrastructure.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

I would love to see governments taking more of a lead on energy. As far as I can tell, energy costs will be THE big problem of life in the next 100 years.

And a government program designed to provide cheap energy for all, will significently contribute to well-being I think.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

The only way the government can deliver cheap energy to consumers is by subsidising it from tax income, basically.

The cheapest source of electricity generation, hydro power, is all in use pretty much. The cheap coal and oil has all been burnt, the gas is going quickly and they are fossil carbon fuels which we really need to keep in the ground anyway. Renewables have their own problems and they are expensive because they are low-density -- it takes a lot of construction and materials to build a wind turbine and its energy return is not that great. Biomass is a joke but it's got government grants for feasibility studies so it's getting some headlines at the moment. Basically what's left for grid power generation purposes is nuclear power and that's got its own cost problems and public perception is against it generally because it's new and scary.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

And then they tell us laughable things like don't worry, when the oil runs out we can all just switch to using electric cars. Without mentioning where the 500 new nuclear power plants required for that will have to go.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Fascinating link, thank you.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

Wind isn't going to deliver reliable power i.e. click the switch and the light comes on reliable unless it is coupled to expensive storage systems. The wind generation companies are using the thermal-station base generators plus hydro to level out their fluctuating power inputs at the moment; adding a lot more more on-supply wind power to the grid will probably break things without the ability to store the power or give the grid operators the ability to refuse to accept wind power onto the grid at certain times.

Wave power is not practical unless you can control the weather and stop hurricanes smashing the generators every year or two. Overbuilding the generators to cope with Beaufort 12-plus wind conditions and century waves makes them incredibly expensive per watt generated and even then they will still break sometimes.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

And I understand the Grid is now hopelessly outdated and over-loaded, due to consistent under-investment in infrastructure since it was privitised and the dividends to share-holders became more important than anything else.

[andrewducker]

Portugal seems to be doing pretty well (45% renewables) - but the majority of that is hydro, so far as I can tell.

[mooism.livejournal.com]

Or perhaps coal-fired power stations can be built faster than nuclear power stations? Genuine question. Lots of UK power stations are due to close in the next few years: *if* it's too late to build nuclear replacements, it could make sense to build new coal-fired ones.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

It's also become very very expensive to build new nuclear power stations too, since Labour sold off the UK nuclear authority to a French company.

That's a good point though, the lead time on building a new nuclear power station is significent. Particularly when you take into consideration trying to find somewhere to put the damned things.

Homeopaths..

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

A 58K job when they're sacking real doctors.

Re: Homeopaths..

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

68K

Re: Homeopaths..

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

####!

[dalglir.livejournal.com]

As stated, I am not currently a registered member of the Faculty of Homeopaths, I am however a member of several institutions of similar levels of prestige and credibility, e.g. I currently own a Blockbuster Video card, and technically my membership of the Desperate Dan fan club was never cancelled, so I may qualify for a senior position in that long-running organisation."

ROFLMAO