jakehop

An airplane will weigh less, the more jet fuel it uses. A battery powered airplane does not have an obvious way of losing weight in this manner, further limiting range.

Talking about 5.000 km is hard: While it won't get you from London to New York without some post-crash landing swimming, the current largest electric plane can fly ~100 miles at around 114mph, with 9 passagers.

I see that you take the laws of physics into account, but allow me to state this for the sake of the conversation: In order to replace jet fuel, we must match what we could call it's useful energy density (energy/kg * efficiency). While electric engines are probably more efficient, we're still up to 2 orders of magnitude away – that's requires a 50-100x improvement of energy density, while maintaining the needed high discharge characteristics, developing a sufficiently efficient electric jet engine and taking into account the increased weight. All at a price where people won't need to save up for years, in order to visit their families.

While I hope to see a zero emission future in my lifetime (actually a negative-emissions might be needed for at time), I feel like putting batteries into airplanes is a bit too much "Silicon Valley Sophism" – shoving the same solution at each and every problem, rather than figuring out what the core of the problem is.

I do love electric cars, but they are not for everyone('s budget). Perhaps the solution is synthetic fuels, combined with carbon capture and a cheap, clean and reliable energy source, such as nuclear power. I know this isn't exactly cheap or readily available either, but it seems like one would bypass a lot of the issues above, by focusing on the source of the problem: Non-neutral use of carbon fuels.

You are skipping a crucial variable: Capacitance Factor.

New nuclear power plants come in at 90-95%+, while lower for both solar (10-25%) and wind (22% for onshore and 36% for offshore in 2018). This means that 1GW of nuclear power will, on average, result in 0,9-0,95GW of grid capacity, while 1GW of offshore wind will result in 1/3rd of that.

So if we use your example with Hornsea 2 (I haven't checked your data, but choose to believe you), Hornsea 2 is 50% more expensive than nuclear power, with out factoring in the cost of large scale energy storage. Ask any honest person in the battery industry – I have done that, because I wanted to know whether or not it was an option – and she will clearly tell you, that they will not even be able to meet the anywhere close to 10% of EU or US storage needs in 2050, while also supplying batteries to EVs and other needs.

Those windmills have an operating life of 15-20 years. Once again, we need to triple or quadruple the cost, to keep that capacity on the grid for an equal amount of time. The same goes for whichever storage solution you choose – batteries for example.

Newer battery technology might change that, but that is a very schizophrenic approach that I see in far too many people, who put their politics first: The environmental challenges are enormous, present and must be solved fast... just not with that specific type of technology, but rather one that we haven't invented yet. I find this close to disqualifying.

Safe modern reactors are built; look at the South Korean project in UAE. SMR's are a relative new field, they have already come very far, which is surprising for many, since government support of this research is close to none, compared to money spent on other green energy projects (even the foolish ones, such as wave energy).

Nuclear is stable and delivers energy 24/7. When the requirement is for stable energy with a high total EROEI, nuclear is a great technology. If one thinks of the environmental situation as a crisis, one should want to act now. Nuclear can be rolled out now and a wide rollout would make the industry do all those things, you think it is lacking. Because not enough is being done now and if it was a purely economic discussion (including proper safety, storage of spent fuel until it can be used, etc. – not cutting corners!), nuclear would already be the major power source in he world. But feelings go above facts, which is hurting science, humanity and the planet.

The battery isn't the source of the energy. You are missing wind and solar (which isn't free), an electrical grid overdesigned for the peak-energy requirements (since you will not get all of your energy over the course of a day).

4 APR-1400 will cost the UAE ~ $24.4 bn to complete. So $600 bn will give you 98 APR-1400 reactors, for a total of 131GW of electrical power – not to mention twice that in thermal power, which can be used for central heating, hydrogen production, etc.

This thermal energy is currently ignored in almost all calculations; it makes little sense to include it in a debate that only focuses on electricity, but at the same time it makes little sense to have such a debate (unless one is a lobbyist), when the use-case is much broader.

The most expensive part of nuclear energy are the capital costs – the discount rate in particular – since it is a "everything up front"-project, where political scrutiny is extremely high (much of it for good reason, but too much is mainly the 'vetocracy' and NIMBYism in action) and the low amount of new plants being built is limiting the build-up of knowledge.

In my native country of Denmark, there is basically zero research in nuclear compared to other energy sources; even in the institutions that were led or founded by the Nobel-prize winning Danish physicist, Niels Bohr. That is all due to politics and it shifts the debate to be less and less about science, which is one of the saddest things to happen.

Of course the probability is never 0,00%. But it is obvious that the Fukushima accident happened due to geological factors. The same power plant would hum away nicely in Germany to this day, where there is little to no seismic activity and none on the scale of what happened in Fukushima.

One view of this is that the question ought to be whether or not those people are right in assigning blame to anyone. If the scientist is fully aware of the risk and willing to use himself as a test subject, it's hard to argue that there is any blame to go around.

Well done!

While an interesting problem to try and solve (in theory, not in practice!), one has to be very much aware of where those 11 votes had to be injected for the “hack” to work.

You basically need to have a somewhat precise picture of the proportionality before you could do it I a non-obvious way (= small margin victory).

While polling gives you something close to that, I don’t believe that it’s precise enough.

No, it’s about the economies of scale of building 50 power plants per year vs 1 per 50 years. Knowledge and know-how is lost and that increases costs.

Wind has become cheaper (but not more reliable) because thousands of turbines are being installed each year. If they were built at the same rate as nuclear, they would be even more expensive (and still not able to provide base load power).

Nuclear fuel can be stored safely (look up Sweden and Finland’s joint project) until it can be burned in next generation reactors, which are being designed and tested as we speak.

Please don’t straw man on HN. It’s destructive to the community and really bad mannered.

The NE555-timer is quite a cool little thing.

More common operational amplifiers are also worth looking into (TL072 is one of my favorites).

Lastly, the 7400-series logic chips are SO interesting. If you need the programmer's version of a jigsaw puzzle, try to build somewhat advanced designs using those. It's very fun and a good learning experience (although hard!).

This guy is building a computer on a breadboard – very intersting indeed: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS0N5baNlQWJCUrhCEo8WlA

You’re missing the point. If your sales tracking alone takes up 16GB of RAM on the client, that isn’t scalable - and potentially a horrible experience to work with. Your point is correct in the single case, but I think we’re discussing beyond that.

I’m pretty sure that using two phones offsets any environmental savings from a single cable by quite a bit. Who knows when the EU will crack down on that kind of splurging?

The projected battery production in 2080 will only cover about 0,01% of Europe’s electricity demand. Batteries are not scalable and hydroelectric dams have their own geographic requirements which can’t be met in flat countries like The Netherlands or Denmark.