We sit on top of a huge one, the earth’s core. If we could harness that, it would be awesome. As it is, heat pumps using the earth or underground water can be much more efficient than air heat exchangers, especially in cold climates.
I suspect the answer is multi-factorial, like a lot of things in life. More efficient use, better insulation, along with improved energy sources will go a long way.
Partial or total melting of the core has happened 4-5(?) times, if I remember right. If
compared to the time nuclear has been used, reality has been worse than expected.
Modern nuclear plants are much safer than the previous ones, so the probability of a meltdown is certainly lower than in the past. New nuclear plants are constructed with a structure that captures the melting core, so Tshernobyl-level accidents are very unlikely. I don’t know about nuclear plants in Russia and China, I hope they are relatively safe.
Even if nuclear plants work perfectly, there is the problem of radioactive waste. This makes nuclear a temporary solution, until we get better ways to produce energy.
Our house (built year 2002) has geothermal heating. It is now quite common that the heating system is changed to geothermal because it is one of the cheapest ways to produce heat. Geothermal lowers heating costs but needs electricity to circulate the solution, which means it is vulnerable to power failures. Not a problem here but a problem in many other places and maybe in the future also here if we get a cyberwar with our usually friendly neighbor.
Several questions from this brief discussion on efficiency.How efficient are fossil fuel technologies and what’s the forecast for better efficiency in fossil fuels? How do the costs (inefficiencies) of accessing the fossil fuel, transporting it to the power plant, and percentage of carbon lost during the burning process, and the cost of additional carbon in the atmosphere (versus all the other places carbon is safely stored) figure in to effiencies and costs. I’m aware - I think we all are becoming more aware - of the huge soft costs involved in excessive, atmospheric carbon, and most of them can now be quantified. Is there a study comparing the total cost per kilowatt of fossil fuels versus clean energy fuels, including the soft costs for each of the sources?
They aren’t so safe when the invading Russians bomb them.
And hopefully wouldn’t be too deleterious to freshwater organisms.
Which brings to mind a few more notes on freshwater organisms: the TVA damming projects killed off about 30 species of freshwater mollusks. Damming, and otherwise modifying, the Coosa and Mobile rivers killed off about 40 and 70 species of mollusks, respectively. Hence, there are significant potential downsides to hydroelectric.
It’s very angering. Have you read , “ Saving America’s Amazon” by Ben Raines? The Scott Duncan book, “ Southern Wonder “ also touches up quite a bit on the freshwater systems of alabama.
SkovandOfMitaze, I’ve not read these 2 books; perhaps others have. But what I infer from the titles is the reason to have this discussion on energy storage from renewable technologies. We are charged to be good stewards of the earth. I think most of us believe the “new earth” in Revelations is from the Greek “kainos,” rather than the other Greek word, “neos.” I’m not a Greek scholar either, but neos seems to mean a complete replacement of our earth; the old one is destroyed and a completely new one replaces it. Revelations uses kainos, where the old earth becomes resurrected with completely new qualities imbued by the Creator, as the dimensions of a new heaven and a new earth join into one kingdom of God. (Someone feel free to correct me.) This is why we are called to care for creation. Thanks for the book referrals.
The books are great. I believe some in here believe that about the new creation. I think we are already in the new creation. I think it’s a ongoing act of stewardship.
For example consider Isaiah 65:17-25
Isaiah 65:17-25
New American Standard Bible
New Heavens and a New Earth
17 “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth;
And the former things will not be remembered or come to [a]mind.
18 But be glad and rejoice forever in what I create;
For behold, I create Jerusalem for rejoicing
And her people for gladness.
19 I will also rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in My people;
And there will no longer be heard in her
The voice of weeping and the sound of crying.
20 No longer will there be in it an infant who lives only a few days,
Or an old person who does not live out his days;
For the youth will die at the age of a hundred,
And the one who does not reach the age of a hundred
Will be thought accursed.
21 They will build houses and inhabit them;
They will also plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
22 They will not build and another inhabit,
They will not plant and another eat;
For as the lifetime of a tree, so will be the days of My people,
And My chosen ones will fully enjoy the work of their hands.
23 They will not labor in vain,
Or give birth to children for disaster;
For they are the descendants of those blessed by the Lord,
And their descendants with them.
24 It will also come to pass that before they call, I will answer; while they are still speaking, I will listen. 25 The wolf and the lamb will graze together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox; and dust will be the serpent’s food. They will do no evil or harm on all My holy mountain,” says the Lord.
In those verses we read that in the new heaven and earth mentioned here that people will build houses and eat from their crops, they will have kids and they will die at a old age. But it is about the new heaven and earth. In the Bible we see the earth and heavens renewed a few times. Every time it’s post conquered. It’s after they get free. It’s very symbolic in its speech. It’s hyperbolic.
This also contradicts the new testament story of restoration where it says “ we will be like angels and not given to marriage “ and so on. So for me
The way I harmonize this version of the restoration with the latter is by recognizing it’s not literal. It’s a message of hope. Isaiah 65 was a story of hope for the Jews getting out of exile and being conquered. Revelation is a story of hope of Christian’s and Jews being set free from the evil reign of the Roman Empire. There is no magical restoration. Even in revelation where it says “ there will be no sea” is a hyperlink back to the chaos thr sea represents in genesis 1.
So we do need to be good stewards because it’s one of our primary mission. It’s just as important as preaching the gospel, being a good spouse, and ect…. Our roles are not at war with one another. I can’t become a better Christian by disrespecting nature in order to preach to the lost and vice versa.
And you know your Bible better than me! Have a good day.
Even with those meltdowns, nuclear is still one of the safest energy sources. Here is a chart of deaths per terawatt of power produced.
There are newer technologies that produce a 10th of the waste, and could even use up much of the waste we have sitting around. On top of that, getting rid of the waste isn’t that difficult once you get past NIMBY and unfounded fears.
Don’t get me wrong, nuclear isn’t perfect. However, we would be way better off if we replaced all carbon based energy production with nuclear right now, and build out future base load power with nuclear.
Sorry - I realize I never responded to this. And probably can’t do it justice any time soon, school being what it is. But yes - I’m sure there must be multiple studies of all these energy cost questions in much more updated form than when I last researched any of this. So perhaps others have already partially addressed it here or will yet.
I’ll only just add that getting total costs of things is a tricky proposition. The coal mining process is one significant cost of coal energy, obviously. But what about the gas used by the coal miner as he drives to work? Or the production of the mining equipment needed to extract the coal? And then those workers working on that? One could follow that regression a long way and probably unfairly magnify the cost of some particular source beyond what might be strictly fair. Probably the best hope is to at least try to be consistent across all the options in that regard as to how they are evaluated. If “end-of-life” issues are to be held against wind-turbines, for example, (and I’m not saying it shouldn’t be a consideration) - then one probably also has to add “end-of-life” costs to coal production and power plants, etc.
Marvin, I heard an NPR “Inner Brain” show several weeks back that described the different parts of the brain that address moral versus economic decisions. Moral decisions often have greater impact because they are not limited by cost-benefit analysis. However, it’s also possible to consider 2nd and 3rd level costs (benefits?) in the analysis. A 2nd level cost in carbon production is the medical care that can be attributed to higher carbon levels. A 3rd level cost would be the opportunity cost of production (someone not able to work, or dying, multiplied into populations of labor or skills or whatever). The analysis could be daunting, but some of the economic schools did such analysis during the depths of the COVID19 US crisis: Booth of Chicago (University of Chicago), The Kellogg School of Northwestern U, to name two. It’s beyond me; I don’t know your skill levels, but I agree with you: it’s out there somewhere. Thanks.
That is a seriously misleading way of measuring safety hazards. I am not against nuclear but think that we should be honestly concentrating on the true hazards.
With nuclear, the greatest risk is that large areas will become uninhabitable after an accident. Like what happened in Chernobyl. The loss of lives there was a tragedy but in the long term, the loss of the area was worse. If you have read what happened or seen the movie that told about those days, you should know that there was a high risk that much larger areas would have been polluted. The sacrifices of local people and miners brought from Russia prevented the worst scenario.
Chernobyl-type accidents should not happen again because the lesson was learned (I hope). There is still a risk that meltdowns happen because the plans are not perfect. For example, nobody expected the earthquake and tsunami in Fukushima.
War and terrorism are risks that cannot be excluded. Even the best nuclear plants are vulnerable.
Finland has a place where the waste of the local nuclear plants can be positioned for tens of thousands of years. That site cannot take waste from other nuclear plants because the store is too small for that. I don’t know if any other country has such a site. Even in Finland, the problem was anything but trivial because the site should stay stable and restricted for a long time period, perhaps even 100’000 years. Much will happen during that time.
I have always wondered in my very non-scientific way, if we couldn’t target some very, very, very distant place to send our nuclear waste.
Figured I’d finally make that thought public here, where there are some rules of discourse AND somevody might just have an informed response.
Hydro electric is all over Michigan and is not so loved anymore.
Yes, this possibility has been considered. Sending the waste to our star would eliminate the problem.
The reason why it has not been done is the risk that the launch of any rockets or starships could fail. If a rocket with nuclear waste explodes at the launch site, everything close to the launch site would become polluted. If the rocket would explode in the atmosphere, the waste could spread and cover vast areas of the globe. Nuclear rain at continental scales is a very, very bad option.
I don’t know if the the waste could be packed so that it does not spread even if the rocket would explode. If it can be done with reasonable price and the explosion happens soon after the launch, the nuclear waste could drop to a relatively small area. With bad luck, that small area could be a city. Dropping radioactive waste to New York or another large city might cause some protests that the politicians would not like to hear.
I assume that when humans figure out how to get the waste beyond the atmosphere safely, we can get rid of the waste - Sun does not complain if it gets small amounts of radioactive waste.
The price of waste disposal would be quite high as sending rockets to Sun is not cheap. This extra cost would make the production of nuclear energy more expensive.
Very practical reasons NOT to follow this idea. Thanks!
Risk management is certainly complex. If the Russian government was willing, they could clean up the area around Chernobyl. They simply don’t want to expend the resources. The greater risk, as you mentioned, is people purposefully targeting reactors and causing the release of radioactive material.
We also have to compare nuclear to the way in which fossil fuels could make large swaths of our planet uninhabitable due to global warming. For example, Florida could nearly disappear if enough ice melts in the Antarctic and Greenland.
No power source is 100% safe. It’s all about weighing the relative risks.
Newer designs have passive safeguards, so they won’t meltdown if they lose power to their cooling systems like Fukushima did.
As a model for how it could work, France currently produces 80% of its power with nuclear. It can be done, and done safely.
The larger question is if all of those safeguards in the storage facility are even needed.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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