Electricity supplies cannot be guaranteed in Belgium in the month of November

[GoldenLag]

7 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Like I said. Not against nuclear, I just think more time needs to be spent on research of more safe reactor designs. AND stop building these fuckers in earthquake prone areas. 

There is a huge ammount of relativly old Reactordesigns out there. Though new designs are avavible, dont think nothing has changed since the 60s even though it may seems so as many reactors were built during that age. 

 

10 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Also an cloudy day drops solar intensity by over one order of magnitude, rendering them effectively useless, not just slowed (unless you consider -90% "slowed")

Sorry, ive missread one of my sources. Though 90% loss all depends on how dense the clouds are, solar panel type, and varying other factors. 

 

13 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Denmark is a tiny country surrounded by ocean. Literally ideal in wind utility. Additionally their over all power usage is low enough that they can cheaply (ish) buy power from Germany and others when they need it, and sell to them when they don't. If the US generates 50% more power than it needed on a day, it literally wouldnt be able to sell it as that would power all of Mexico (let alone the lack of infrastructure).

Yes Denmark is relativly tiny, thou per capita they spend quite a bit of power. 

 

Yes they can buy power cheap-ish from germany, they can aslo Buy from Norway. Though this also works the other way around as they can export some of that power if they so happen to have an abundance. 

 

 

Even with the downsides of these power solutions, they still have an ROI time within their lifespan. Whichs for business is what matters. 

[Curufinwe_wins]

4 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

Not ideal because wind speeds are lower. You'll note that most major Danish offshore wind projects are off the west coast in the North Sea, or well off the east coast into the Baltic, rather than in the internal straits which would be closer to population centers.

Still far better than onshore wind in the tons of countries without reliable jet streams.

 

And again, the ability to absorb load differences that comes with a small country is the biggest benefit. 

 

China and the US (China has done a TON in the last three years) are the two biggest producers of wind energy and yet those are considered low levels of renewable by the general public.

[GoldenLag]

7 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

Not ideal because wind speeds are lower. You'll note that most major Danish offshore wind projects are off the west coast in the North Sea, or well off the east coast into the Baltic, rather than in the internal straits which would be closer to population centers.

Indeed, doesn stop people from transporting power a long way using high voltage seacables. See the numerous cables stretching from Norway to Germany and back among others. 

 

11 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

I don't know much about it either, but Braniac75 mentioned it in this video:

 

Ive got a tiny bit more than that, but its mostly easy research while doing assignements and derailing looking at thorium reactors and related topics. 

[Sakkura]

4 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

It is also posited by some people that U233 separation from U232 is too difficult to be practical and U233 gammas are too harsh to be practically shielded against during attempted making and storage of nuclear weapons, and thus thorium cycles are more proliferation resistant. There are many in the industry that disagree, and suggest that any continuous separation method is an unacceptable proliferation risk. (Note these are the type of people, myself included that see core event frequencies of 1 per Million-reactor-years as unacceptably high for a new reactor design. That is how paranoid and safe our plants have to be.)

Separation of U232 and U233 is a physical process, which is vastly more difficult than chemical separation of plutonium from uranium (235 and 238). It's the same type of process as existing uranium enrichment, except that deals with naturally occurring U235 and U238. The bottom line is that it's just very expensive to do.

1 minute ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Still far better than onshore wind in the tons of countries without reliable jet streams.

 

And again, the ability to absorb load differences that comes with a small country is the biggest benefit. 

 

China and the US (China has done a TON in the last three years) are the two biggest producers of wind energy and yet those are considered low levels of renewable by the general public.

The jet stream is in the stratosphere...

 

Absorbing load differences is HARDER in a smaller country, as I already explained.

 

China and the US have done less on a per capita basis. It's pretty ridiculous to compare Denmark and China in absolute terms.

[GoldenLag]

A lot of the downsides to green energy has green workaround. Such as energy inconsistancy. 

 

Water pump facilities store energy at a relativly good efficiency while storing very large ammounts of it. 

 

Using the same concept using weights and gears it can be accomplished in places unable to build artificial lakes using dams

[Speed Weed]

Time to convert depression and anxiety into electricity. 

[Curufinwe_wins]

4 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

Separation of U232 and U233 is a physical process, which is vastly more difficult than chemical separation of plutonium from uranium (235 and 238). It's the same type of process as existing uranium enrichment, except that deals with naturally occurring U235 and U238. The bottom line is that it's just very expensive to do.

The jet stream is in the stratosphere...

 

Absorbing load differences is HARDER in a smaller country, as I already explained.

 

China and the US have done less on a per capita basis. It's pretty ridiculous to compare Denmark and China in absolute terms.

 

Light purple is 6m/s and considered bad.

 

 

Brown is 6m/s and considered quite good. (DOE considered 5m/s to be good at the moment.)

 

Wind quality is FAR BETTER in Denmark.

 

Sorry prevailing winds, not jetstream. Same idea.

 

When the US installs 20x the wind energy Denmark does, it does a heck of a lot more to push the tech forward. When China does 2-3x the US that pushes the technology far more than anything else out there.

[GoldenLag]

30 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

From what I recall, we bury it in the ground. Mistakes are bound to happen, nothing on this earth is perfect. We can take measures to lower the chances of a mistake happening, but humans and machines all have some errors.

Using the burialsite in Finland. We bury it underground somewhere it can do no harm. Then we fill it with concrete and tell noone as in hope that noone will take up the challange of digging it up. Constructing a universal "danger" sign is very difficult as we dont know what a deathskull means 20k+ years in the future. 

[suicidalfranco]

here we go again

 

[GoldenLag]

7 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

When the US installs 20x the wind energy Denmark does, it does a heck of a lot more to push the tech forward. When China does 2-3x the US that pushes the technology far more than anything else out there.

Hows that per capita?

 

Denmark is a large turbine produces. A lot of costal ccountries in Europe among Greece is throwing money at windpower. 

 

The US has quite a bit of coastline, though the westcoast might not be ideal due to eartquakezones. The eastcoast should have some areas that should have some consistant wind.

 

US is not the innovative country it once was. China is doing it now. 

[Curufinwe_wins]

20 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

Separation of U232 and U233 is a physical process, which is vastly more difficult than chemical separation of plutonium from uranium (235 and 238). It's the same type of process as existing uranium enrichment, except that deals with naturally occurring U235 and U238. The bottom line is that it's just very expensive to do.

I'm very aware of the differences. But current non-recycled Uranium fuel cycles dont do any chemical separation at all (except through illegal diversion, which is exactly why the IAEA is supposed to monitor these things, not that the US allows it for themselves), so that's why it's still considered more of a risk. But separating a mass fraction 3 of 238 is exponentially easier than separating 1 from 233, which is why it's often considered impractical, and potentially impossible (there are realistic limits to mass fraction separation).

 

The issue is that continuous separation cycles imply chemical separation of pure substances, which MIGHT make it easier to divert. But only if the gamma poisoning isnt too harsh to handle. 

 

The industry knows the physics, math and statistics quite well, we just argue about how much is an acceptable risk.  Thus the "might" and "often" and "potentially" equivocations.

[aezakmi]

1 hour ago, Cheeky Leo said:

The prices are insanely high I have to say. 

It's $484 for a MW, that's roughly 48 cents per KW

 

haven't done the math but I must be paying at least twice that per KW/h

and they have nuclear power plants not coal burning ovens

[Sakkura]

15 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Brown is 6m/s and considered quite good. (DOE considered 5m/s to be good at the moment.)

 

Wind quality is FAR BETTER in Denmark.

 

Sorry prevailing winds, not jetstream. Same idea.

 

When the US installs 20x the wind energy Denmark does, it does a heck of a lot more to push the tech forward. When China does 2-3x the US that pushes the technology far more than anything else out there.

http://mapfinder.espon.eu/?p=1202

 

Denmark doesn't have especially good onshore wind resources. We do have a slice of the North Sea which is well suited for offshore wind - but other countries have much bigger slices of it.

 

Denmark invested in wind energy in the early 1980s, when it was not yet a mature technology. That's when it really needed help to get going, and we spearheaded that. As recently as 2006, Denmark, a country of less than 6 million people, had more wind power than China with its billion+ population.

 

As for the US, there's no problem in the US having a smaller share of wind power. It has much higher insolation than Denmark and thus it's natural to skew more towards solar power.

[GoldenLag]

2 minutes ago, aezakmi said:

It's $484 for a MW, that's roughly 48 cents per KW

 

haven't done the math but I must be paying at least twice that per KW/h

and they have nuclear power plants not coal burning ovens

Heh, Norwegian prices. 4 US cents a kilowatt. An average 100% ish percentile selfsufishesy on water power, wind power among some few others. Green energy. Offcourse some downtime in energy leading to purschasing power from mainland europe. Mostly exporting power to mainland europe. 

 

And the companies are running on full profit mode. Not thinking about enviroment. We dont neccesarly have to inport any power, we just do because its much better to sell power than keepikg it in magazines

[Sauron]

They could do like Italy does and buy power from France. 'course, this begs the question of what the point of shutting down your plants is if you just use another country's plants - not to mention nuclear reactors can't be turned off as far as I know, they just keep running at a low regimen and the energy they would produce is wasted.

[Curufinwe_wins]

8 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

Hows that per capita?

 

Denmark is a large turbine produces. A lot of costal ccountries in Europe among Greece is throwing money at windpower. 

 

The US has quite a bit of coastline, though the westcoast might not be ideal due to eartquakezones. The eastcoast should have some areas that should have some consistant wind.

 

US is not the innovative country it once was. China is doing it now. 

Per capita Denmark is something like 3x? (Quick mental math. Unfortunately while power statistics are up to date, per capita is back at 2013 levels which makes a huge difference and are not particularly useful or valid anymore.)

 

The thing is... the available technology that builds each tower, each grid, power transformation is effectively the same worldwide. Pure power size is much more important in moving markets than per capita (for obvious reasons. Market captialization and all). So if Denmark says let's increase wind by 50% it means a lot less for the planet and future of wind than China saying let's increase by 10%. 

 

I posted wind maps of the US a little but ago. Outside of the direct shores, the best wind quality is in the great plains and even then, by the standard of many other countries in the developed world (ala the comparison to Denmark) it is poor quality wind. And yes, the issues with earthquakes is a thing.

 

Anyways! The big thing is that replacing baseload sources with intermittent sources is insane. Energy storage is not anywhere close to practical in the quantities required, and physical/thermal storage is the only bulk option anyways, since chemical storage (ala batteries) are at maximum 85% efficiency (one way) and that's if you use incredibly non-enviromentally friendly batteries. Hydrolysis (not from fossil fuel mixed cycle) is only 64% at a whopping 850C (something achievable only from next gen nuclear, the highest concentrated solar power sources, or the afforementioned fossil fuels.) At a more reasonably achievable 100C, the reaction is only 41% efficient.

[Curufinwe_wins]

27 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

http://mapfinder.espon.eu/?p=1202

 

Denmark doesn't have especially good onshore wind resources. We do have a slice of the North Sea which is well suited for offshore wind - but other countries have much bigger slices of it.

 

Denmark invested in wind energy in the early 1980s, when it was not yet a mature technology. That's when it really needed help to get going, and we spearheaded that. As recently as 2006, Denmark, a country of less than 6 million people, had more wind power than China with its billion+ population.

 

As for the US, there's no problem in the US having a smaller share of wind power. It has much higher insolation than Denmark and thus it's natural to skew more towards solar power.

And Denmark reached 1GW capacity in wind 11 years after the US did. (1986 vs 1997). In 1983, the US had 15x the installed capacity Denmark did. 

 

Not sure why people seem to think such a disproportionate total push by Denmark in Wind, just as they do for Nuclear with France. The simple fact is, while per capita is rather large, and while a major 'face' to the movement, which isnt of non-zero value, other countries did far more to push things.

 

Just saying.

 

None of this matters. It is only tangentially related to the original point being made. Scaling up renewables high enough to displace baseload is not actually a viable plan in a wide swath of the world. 

 

[ARikozuM]

Who's the genius that decided all nuclear power facilities should go down around the same time? This sounds like someone is trying to finish all of their homework on the last day of school and hoping for a good outcome. 

[Tellos]

I seriously continue to say nuclear power is a wonderful tech and our lack of investment in growing it is terrible. And europes showing us why. France built many standardized nuclear plants and it helped it for decades deal with an energy crisis.

[Master Delta Chief]

4 hours ago, aezakmi said:

It's $484 for a MW, that's roughly 48 cents per KW

 

haven't done the math but I must be paying at least twice that per KW/h

and they have nuclear power plants not coal burning ovens

It's still a lot of money that the people in my country have to pay. We pay more than any other neighboring countries at the moment. We used to be around 614 EUR ($713,56) average when it came to paying the invoice. Now we're like 400 EUR more. The average around the neighboring countries is around 775 EUR. I'll link down below an article from a Flemish newspaper.

 

Source (NOTE: Article is in Dutch) 

Mabrouk, FE., Belg betaalt al kwart meer voor elektriciteit dan inwoners buurlanden, Het Nieuwsblad, 2018-09-28, (https://www.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dmf20180927_03791392)

 

4 hours ago, ARikozuM said:

Who's the genius that decided all nuclear power facilities should go down around the same time? This sounds like someone is trying to finish all of their homework on the last day of school and hoping for a good outcome. 

I suppose it's gonna be the guys that own the power plants AKA Electrabel. Someone decided it to be a good idea to do that at the time when electricity is more needed than in teh summer. Besides, I also put the blame on the failing energy policies put on by the government. They should've fixed it long ago. 

[Sakkura]

10 hours ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

And Denmark reached 1GW capacity in wind 11 years after the US did. (1986 vs 1997). In 1983, the US had 15x the installed capacity Denmark did. 

 

Not sure why people seem to think such a disproportionate total push by Denmark in Wind, just as they do for Nuclear with France. The simple fact is, while per capita is rather large, and while a major 'face' to the movement, which isnt of non-zero value, other countries did far more to push things.

 

Just saying.

 

None of this matters. It is only tangentially related to the original point being made. Scaling up renewables high enough to displace baseload is not actually a viable plan in a wide swath of the world. 

 

1983? Denmark produced about ten times as much wind power that year as the entire US. And that's from a country comparable to the state of Maryland.

[Curufinwe_wins]

24 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

1983? Denmark produced about ten times as much wind power that year as the entire US. And that's from a country comparable to the state of Maryland.

Note the "errata" on that page. Quite simply the original source (for the table listed on wikipedia on that page) has an bug there. The "original source" is in beta itself and mentions programming errors may exist.

 

Quote

¹ [sic] – Generation does not correlate with installed capacity, which would suggest approximately 0.33, 0.87, 1.54, 2.13, 2.50, 2.47 TWh from 1983 to 1988 for the United States.

 

Installed capacity.

 

 

 

 

 

Quote

In 1980 the world's first wind farm, consisting of twenty 30 kW wind turbines was installed at Crotched Mountain, in New Hampshire.^[9]

 

From 1974 through the mid-1980s the United States government worked with industry to advance the technology and enable large commercial wind turbines. A series of NASA wind turbines were developed under a program to create a utility-scale wind turbine industry in the U.S., with funding from the National Science Foundation and later the United States Department of Energy (DOE). A total of 13 experimental wind turbines were put into operation, in four major wind turbine designs. This research and development program pioneered many of the multi-megawatt turbine technologies in use today, including: steel tube towers, variable-speed generators, composite blade materials, partial-span pitch control, as well as aerodynamic, structural, and acoustic engineering design capabilities.

 

Later, in the 1980s, California provided tax rebates for wind power. These rebates funded the first major use of wind power for utility electric power. These machines, gathered in large wind parks such as at Altamont Pass would be considered small and un-economic by modern wind power development standards. In 1985 half of the world's wind energy was generated at Altamont Pass. By the end of 1986 about 6,700 wind turbines, mostly less than 100 kW, had been installed at Altamont, at a cost of about $1 billion, and generated about 550 million kWh/year.^[10]

 

 

Original time-valid source puts Altamont Pass by itself at .55 TWh (generated, against a 5 TWh capacity rating , which directly agrees with the errata above, and directly disputes the claimed .00576 TWh total capacity at the time)

 

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev.eg.12.110187.001045

[Sakkura]

59 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Note the "errata" on that page. Quite simply the original source (for the table listed on wikipedia on that page) has an bug there. The "original source" is in beta itself and mentions programming errors may exist.

 

 

Installed capacity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Original time-valid source puts Altamont Pass by itself at .55 TWh (generated, against a 5 TWh capacity rating , which directly agrees with the errata above, and directly disputes the claimed .00576 TWh total capacity at the time)

 

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev.eg.12.110187.001045

I'm just quoting the IEA.

 

If you want other evidence, then the first megawatt-class wind turbine was built in Denmark, and the two biggest manufacturers of wind turbines originated in Denmark (Vestas is still fully Danish, while Siemens-Gamesa is a Danish/German/Spanish conglomerate).

[ignaloidas]

13 hours ago, Sauron said:

not to mention nuclear reactors can't be turned off as far as I know, they just keep running at a low regimen and the energy they would produce is wasted.

They can't be temporarily stopped, that's true, but they can be disassembled. Fairily recently, on was shutdown in Lithuania(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignalina_Nuclear_Power_Plant)

[samcool55]

For people that don't live in Belgium, in 2015 we were also told there wouldn't be enough power during the winter and there were also plans of when which part of the country would be "turned off" in case of a power shortage. Guess how many times a part of Belgium was actually shut down.

Of course it was 0, not a single time was there an actual lack of power so i doubt there will be actual problems this time.

 

Also, 2 years ago there was a sort of test where 10k households participated in, completely voluntary. The test was simple, reduce power usage when asked but don't go completely dark. So this means turn off lights or devices that aren't really necessary but you can keep your fridge for example plugged in. Test was very succesful and it sort of made the plans to put complete cities dark a bit redundant and unnecessary. I mean how hard can it be to just ask citizens in a country "hey, we are running out of power right now, would you mind turning off some devices and lights?" Can't be that difficult...