Energy talk: Nuclear vs Coal. But what about wind, water, sun? | Hacker News Reader

Energy talk: Nuclear vs Coal. But what about wind, water, sun?

2 pointsthesethings3 comments

Due to recent events, I've witnessed a few Twitter fights debating nuclear safety, viability, and coal energy.

But I'm wondering why people discuss water, wind, and sun energy less seriously. Where I live, we have an option to get a major chunk of our home's energy from these sources. (And yes, I use this option.)

I've always assumed that these three sources (nicknamed "renewable" in Oregon power companies) just suffered from the "organic catch-22." There's not much of it, because people don't buy it, because there's not much of it, because people don't buy it.

But in the back of my mind, I assumed that if infrastructure slowly moved over, we could actually live in a world run by this stuff.

I've also seen and read about very big businesses powered by these energy sources.

But now I'm feeling like an ignorant dork. People who I respect don't even bring up the renewable trio when discussing nuclear vs coal energy. I can only assume there's something really inefficient about them that everybody knows about except for me.

Anybody truly informed about it wanna chime in? Though I may ask further questions, I am not trying to start anything contentious.

Water, wind and sun won't displace nuclear and carbon-based energy for a number of reasons, cost being foremost. The best that "renewable" energy can do is temper demand for carbon-based energy.

The only reasonable replacement for the power infrastructure we have today is fusion power, but that's between 10 and 50 years away from commercial viability depending on who you listen to.

Is this cost like "organic" cost? (In that organic things get cheaper the more that gets produced).

Is there hope of renewable energy sources getting cheaper if they get more ubiquitous? In Portland we have a major wind turbine manufacturer, Vestas (http://www.vestas.com. They are from Europe, but have a big location here).

I guess my question is, the blades + farms get cheaper in large quantities, like anything else. So it seems the cost part could get better. But if they simply can't make enough power, that seems harder to conquer. Are you saying these things can't make enough power? (I suspect everybody knows this except for me.)

[Update. I'm slightly more educated than I was a few hours ago.]

I've found two reports that outline ways to migrate to renewables. They are sobering, but actually achievable.

A common thread among those who create actual concrete plans for running on renewable energy is this: We must use less energy to have our energy needs met by renewable sources.

(Their projections do account for the growth of newly industrialized nations, so it's not double-trouble.)

Some of the use-less-energy changes we would notice (how we get the food that reaches our table), and other changes we could integrate and not notice at all (lots of energy escapes buildings for no good reason, and that could change with different process + design becoming more dominant).

A cool part is that they don't see higher cost as long-term issue (that renewable energy is only temporarily expensive because it's uncommon and used in small doses).

Another kinda optimistic thing is that parts of the world that are still becoming "industrialized" have somewhat of an advantage (as they do with leapfrogging any kind of tech generation), and in some cases are being born with more renewable systems to begin with.

I completely understand those who overlook renewable sources because of the amount of energy we currently use is more than we can produce with them. It's not a dumb conclusion. But after going over these reports, I don't think using less energy is any more of an imposition than changing any other kind of infrastructure, and in many cases is stuff we're moving towards anyway.

http://getsatisfaction.com/wwf/topics/debate_the_energy_repo... http://assets.panda.org/downloads/101223_energy_report_final... [pdf, pdf, pdf! i warned you] http://www.greenpeace.org/er-ship/Global/international/publi... [pdf]

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