11-16-2014, 09:34 PM
Providing energy for the world is a huge problem, maybe the most important one humanity is facing. We live in a world of coal, and coal is killing us. Not just through climate change, but smog as well. It's by far the most lethal form of power.
I'd love solar and wind to be the answer. Maybe they are. Certainly it's encouraging the solar is getting cheaper, and new processes will hopefully make it less reliant on rare minerals. But, as Jester pointed out, intermittency is a big deal. Germany has been trying to switch to renewables in a big way, and the result has been a sharp increase in fossil fuel use. Adding a bit of solar here and there is great for taking small bites out of fossil fuel usage, but the more you use the more challenging and expensive it gets.
In the end, you need to be able to generate 100% of the demand 100% of the time. There are no cost effective storage systems, so renewables need standby capacity, usually natural gas because it's best suited to the role. All that standby power costs a fortune, and it can lead to less efficient gas plants because they have to be designed to turn on and off on short notice. Renewables with gas backup is environmentally one of the best options, but it's so much more expensive that I can't see it catching on globally. Maybe if cells get super cheap, and maybe a smart grid can help, but right now its not looking very practical as a primary electricity source.
Weighing all the pros and cons, I'd like to see a lot more investment in nuclear, especially on the research end. It doesn't mesh very well with renewables unfortunately, but its emission free and very reliable. The problems with nuclear are essentially all engineering challenges rather than inherent limitations of the concept. Safety, waste, available fuel supply and even cost are all highly dependant on the design of the reactor. Unfortunately, there hasn't been very much experimentation and prototyping of new reactor designs in the last 30 years. The most current designs were pretty much driven by military needs half a century ago, not a rational look at what would be best for civilian power. Even current reactor designs aren't really that bad though. People overhype the safety concerns because radiation is invisible and scary, but in the end the numbers show it's pretty much the safest power we've got even including big disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima which didn't kill nearly as many people as most think. Waste can just be stored, and maybe in the future used as fuel in a new reactor design. It's a much more manageable problem than CO2 emissions.
In the end I fear economics will be what sort this problem out. The world will keep using mainly fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. Renewables will grow as a first world guilt reliever, but probably won't displace coal or gas as a major global source. Hydro doesn't have much growth potential, and nuclear takes so long to build and has so few countries investing in it that it won't grow much. Fossil fuels will eventually start to run out and get more expensive to extract. As their cost rises, something else will emerge as the cheapest option. I just hope the damage done to the climate in the mean time isn't too devastating.
I'd love solar and wind to be the answer. Maybe they are. Certainly it's encouraging the solar is getting cheaper, and new processes will hopefully make it less reliant on rare minerals. But, as Jester pointed out, intermittency is a big deal. Germany has been trying to switch to renewables in a big way, and the result has been a sharp increase in fossil fuel use. Adding a bit of solar here and there is great for taking small bites out of fossil fuel usage, but the more you use the more challenging and expensive it gets.
In the end, you need to be able to generate 100% of the demand 100% of the time. There are no cost effective storage systems, so renewables need standby capacity, usually natural gas because it's best suited to the role. All that standby power costs a fortune, and it can lead to less efficient gas plants because they have to be designed to turn on and off on short notice. Renewables with gas backup is environmentally one of the best options, but it's so much more expensive that I can't see it catching on globally. Maybe if cells get super cheap, and maybe a smart grid can help, but right now its not looking very practical as a primary electricity source.
Weighing all the pros and cons, I'd like to see a lot more investment in nuclear, especially on the research end. It doesn't mesh very well with renewables unfortunately, but its emission free and very reliable. The problems with nuclear are essentially all engineering challenges rather than inherent limitations of the concept. Safety, waste, available fuel supply and even cost are all highly dependant on the design of the reactor. Unfortunately, there hasn't been very much experimentation and prototyping of new reactor designs in the last 30 years. The most current designs were pretty much driven by military needs half a century ago, not a rational look at what would be best for civilian power. Even current reactor designs aren't really that bad though. People overhype the safety concerns because radiation is invisible and scary, but in the end the numbers show it's pretty much the safest power we've got even including big disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima which didn't kill nearly as many people as most think. Waste can just be stored, and maybe in the future used as fuel in a new reactor design. It's a much more manageable problem than CO2 emissions.
In the end I fear economics will be what sort this problem out. The world will keep using mainly fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. Renewables will grow as a first world guilt reliever, but probably won't displace coal or gas as a major global source. Hydro doesn't have much growth potential, and nuclear takes so long to build and has so few countries investing in it that it won't grow much. Fossil fuels will eventually start to run out and get more expensive to extract. As their cost rises, something else will emerge as the cheapest option. I just hope the damage done to the climate in the mean time isn't too devastating.